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NOTES 


THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD. 



EICHAKD CHENEYIX TKEXCH, D. J)., 

AECHBISHOP OF DUBLIN. 


J^BW EDITION. 

REVISED, "WITH ADDITIONS. 

NEW YORK: 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 
1, S, AUD 6 BOND STREET. 

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CONTENTS. 


PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 


eKAi>iEn 

1 . On the Names oe the Miracles. 

II. The Miracles and Nature. 

XII. The Authority op Miracles. 

IV. The Evangelical, compared with other Cycles op 

Miracles. 

V. The Assaults on the Miracles. 

VI. The Apologetic Worth op the Miracles 


PAGB 

I 

9 

23 

36 

62 

94 


MJR4CLES. 

1. The Water turned into Wine. 

2. The Healing op the Nobleman’s Son 

3. The First Miraculous Draught op Fishes 

4. The Stilling op the Tempest . 

5. The Demoniacs in the Country op the Gadarenes 

6. The Eaising op Jairus’ Daughter .... 

7. The Healing op the Woman with an Issue op Blood . 200 

8. The Opening op the Eyes op Two Blind in the House 208 

9. The Healing op the Paralytic . . . . .21s 

10. The Cleansing op the Leper.224 

11. The Healing op the Centurion’s Servant . . .23(1 

12. The Demoniac in the Synagogue op Capernaum . . 244 


105 

126 

^4 

160 
190 



VI 


CONTENTS. 


PAGB 

13. The Healing oe Simon’s Wife’s Motheh. . . . 248 

14. The Raising of the Widow’s Son.254 

15. The Healing of the Impotent Man at Bethesda . . 259 

6, The Miraculous Feeding of Five Thousand . . .278 

17, The Walking on the Sea.291 

18. The Opening of the Eyes of one born Blind . . 305 


19. The Restoring of the Man with a Withered Hand . 330 

20. The Restoring of the Woman with a Spirit op 

Ikfirmity.34^ 

21. The Healing of the Man with a Dropsy . . . 348 

22. The Cleansing of the Ten Lepers.351 

23. The Healing of the Daughter of the Syrophcenician 


Woman.359 

24. The Healing of one Deaf and Dumb . . . .370 

25. The Miraculous Feeding of Four Thousand . . .376 


26. The Opening of the Eyes of one Blind at Bethsaida . 380 

27. The Healing of the Lunatic Child . . . .384 

28. The Stater in the Fish’s Mouth. 394 

29. The Raising of Lazarus.410 

30. The Opening of the Eyes of Two Blind Men near 

Jericho.45^ 

31. The Cursing of the Barren Fig-Tree .... 462 

32. The Healing of Malchus’ Ear.474 

j3. The Second Miraculous Dp..\ught of Fishf.s . , , 480 






PRELIMINAKY ESSAY. 



E very discussion about a thing will best proceed from 
an investigation of the name or names which it bears; 
for the name seizes and presents the most distinctive 
features, the innermost nature of the thing, embodying 
this for us in a word. In the name we have a witness to 
that which the universal sense of men, finding its utter¬ 
ance in language, has ever felt thus to lie at the heart of 
the thing; and if we would learn to know this, we must 
start with an investigation of the name or names which it 
bears. In the discussion upon which now we are entering, 
there is not one name only, but many, to consider; for it 
results from what just has been said, that where we have 
to do with aught which in many ways is significant, the 
names also will inevitably be many, since no one will 
exhaust all its meaning. Each of these will embody a 
poi-tion of its essential qualities, will present it upon some 
single side; and not from the contemplation exclusively 
of any one, but only of all of these together, will any 
adequate conception of that which we desire to understand 
be obtained. Thus what we commonly call miracles, are 
in the sacred Scriptures termed sometimes ‘wonders,’ 
sometimes ‘ signs,’ sometimes ‘ powers,’ sometimes simply 
‘works.’ Some other titles which they bear, of rarer 
occurrence, will easily range themselves under one or 
other of these;—on each of which it will be well to say 


2 ON THE NAMES 

something, before making any farther advance in the 
subject. 

I. In the name ‘wonder/^ the astonishment, which the 
work produces upon the beholders, an astonishment often 
graphically portrayed by the Evangelists when relating our 
Lord’s miracles (Mark ii. 12; iv. 41; vi. 51; vii. 37; cf. 
Acts iii. 10, ii), is transferred to the work itself. This 
word, as will at once be felt, does but touch the outside of 
the matter. The ethical meaning of the miracle would 
be wholly lost, were blank astonishment or mere amaze¬ 
ment all which it aroused; since the same effect might be; 
produced by a thousand meaner causes. Indeed it is not 
a little remarkable, rather is it profoundly characteristic 
of the miracles of the Hew Testament, as Origen noted 
long ago,^ that this name ^ wonders ’ is never applied to 
them but in connexion with some other name. They are 
continually ^ signs wonders ’ (Acts xiv. 3; Eom. xv. 19; 
Matt. xxiv. 24; Heb. ii. 4); or ^ signs ’ alone (John ii. 11; 
Acts viii. 6; Eev. xiii. 13); or ‘powers ’ alone (Mark vi. 
14; Acts xix. 11); but never ‘ wonders ’ alone.^ Hot that 
the miracle, considered simply as a wonder, as an astonish¬ 
ing event which the beholders can reduce to no law with 
which they are acquainted, is even as such without its 
meaning and its purpose; that purpose being forcibly to 
startle men from the dull dream of a sense-bound existence, 

^ Tepag. The term Bavpa, near akin to rspac, and frequent in tke Greek 
Fathers, never occurs in Scripture 5 Oavpdaiov only once (Matt. xxi. 15) • 
but the davpaZeiv is often brought out as a consequence (Matt. viii. 27 ; 
ix. 8, 33; XV. 31, &c.). Uapiido^ov, 'which expresses the unexpected 
character of the wonder, its contradiction to previous expectation and 
BO the astonishment -which it causes,—a -word frequent in ecclesiastical 
Greek,—is found only at Luke v. 26 ; cf. Num. xvi. 30. 

* In Joh. tom. xiii. § 6. 

® We must regret that words, only subordinate in the Greek, should 
be chief with us,—‘wonder’ I mean, and ‘miracle,’—to designate these 
divine facts, bringing out, as they do, only the accidental accompaniment, 
the astonishment which the work creates, and so little entering into the 
deeper meaning of the work itself. The Latin miraculum (not properly a 
substantive, but the neuter of miraculus) and the German Wunder lie 
under exactly the same defect. 


OF THE MIRACLES. 


3 


and, however it may not be itself an appeal to the spiritual 
in man, yet to act as a summons to him that he now open 
his eyes to the spiritual appeal which is about to be 
addrest to him (Acts xiv. 8-i8). 


2. But the miracle is not a wonder ’ only; it is also a 
‘ sign,^ ^ a token and indication of tbe near presence and 
working of God. In this word the ethical purpose of the 
miracle comes out the most prominently, as in ^ wonder ’ 
the least. They are signs and pledges of something more 
than and beyond themselves (Isai. vii. i r; xxxviii. 7); ^ 
valuable, not so much for what they are, as for what they 

' We notice here that defect, too common in our English 

Version, that it does not seek, so far as possible, to render one word of 
the original always by one and the same word in English, but varies its 
renderings with no necessity compelling. 'S.rjftnov might very well have 
been rendered ‘sign’ throughout; but in the Gospel of St. John, where 
it is of continual recurrence, far oftener than not, ‘ sign ’ gives place to the 
vaguer ‘miracle,’ and this sometimes with manifest injury to the sense; 
thus see iii. 2; vii. 31; x. 41; and especially vi. 26. Our Version makes 
Christ say to the multitude, who, after He had once fed them, gathered 
round Him again, ‘ Ye seek Me, not because ye saw the miracles,^ &c. It 
should have been, ‘ Ye seek Me, not because ye saw signs ’ {armna with¬ 
out the article), ‘not because ye recognized in those works of mine tokens 
and intimations of a higher presence, such as led you to conceive great 
thoughts of Me : no such glimpses of my higher nature bring you here; 
but you come that you may again be filled.’ The coming merely because 
they had seen miracles, works that had made them marvel, and hoped to 
see such again, would as little have satisfied the Lord as a coming only 
for the supply of their lowest earthly wants (Matt. xii. 39; xvi. 1-4). 

* Basil (in loc.') : "Eort aagtiov Trpayna <pavspbv, KSKpvpgkvov rivbg koI 
apavovc&v iavT(p rijv bijXwcriv ixov: and presently after, y gsvToi Vpapr) ra 
Trapddo^a, xai TrapacrrariKci nvog pLvariKov \6yov aijgtla KaXti. And Lanipe 
well (^Comm. in Joh. vol. i. p. 513) : Designat sane arjns'iov natura sua 
rem non tantum extraordinariam, sensiisque percellentem, sed etiam 
talem, quae in rei alterius, absentis licet et futurrn, signi/lcationem atque 
adumhrationem adhibetur, unde et prognostica (Matt. xvi. 3) et typi 
(Matt. xii. 39; Luc. xi. 29), nec non saeramenta, quale est illud circum- 
cisionis (Eom. iv. 11), eodem nomine in Novo Testamento exprimi solent. 
Aptissime ergo haec vox de miraculis usurpatur, ut indicet, quod non tan¬ 
tum admirabili modo fuerint perpetrata, sed etiam sapientissimo consilio 
Dei ita directa atque ordinata, ut fuerint simul characteres Messise, ex 
quibus cognoscendus erat, sigilla doctrinae quam proferebat, et beneficio- 
rum gratise per Messiam jam praestandae, nec non typi viarum Dei, 
earumque circumstantiarum per quas talia beneficia erant applicanda. 


ON THE EAMES 


indicate of the grace and power of the doer, or of the con¬ 
nexion in which he stands with a higher world. Often¬ 
times they are thns seals of power set to the person who 
accomplishes them ('the Lord confirming the word by 
signs following,’ Mark xvi. 20; Acts xiv. 3 ; Heb. ii. 4) ; 
legitimating acts, by which he claims to be attended to as 
a messenger from God.' ' What sign showest thou ’ (John 
ii. 18) ? was the question which the Jews asked, when 
they wanted the Lord to justify the things which He was 
doing, by showing that He had especial authority to do 
them. Again they say,' We would see a sign from Thee ’ 
(Matt. xii. 38); ‘ Show us a sign from heaven ’ (Matt. xvi. i). 
St. Paul speaks of himself as having 'the signs of an 
apostle ’ (2 Cor. xii. 12), in other words, the tokens which 
designate him as such. Thus, too, in the Old Testament, 
when God sends Moses to deliver Israel He furnishes him 
with two 'signs.’ He warns him that Pharaoh will 
require him to legitimate his mission, to produce his 
credentials that he is indeed God’s ambassador, and 
equips him with the powers which shall justify him as 
such, which, in other words, shall be his ' signs ’ (Exod. 
vii. 9, 10). He 'gave a sign’ to the prophet, whom He 
sent to protest against the will-worship of Jeroboam 
(i Kin. xiii. 3).^ 

^ The Latin mmstru 7 n, whether we derive it with Cicero {De Divin. 
i. 42) from monstro, or with Festus from moneo (monstriim, velut 
monestrum, quod monet futurum), though commonly used as = rkpag 
(Nec duhiis ea signa dedit Tritonia monstris, Alu. ii. 171 j vii. 81, 270), 
is in truth hy either etymology more nearly related to mifmov. Thus 
Augustine, who follows Cicero’s derivation (De Civ. Dei, xxi. 8); 
Monstra sane dicta perhibent a monstrando, quod aliquid significando 
demonstrant, et ostenta ah ostendendo, et portenta a portendendo, id est 
praeostendendo, et prodiyia quod porro dicant, id est futura predicant. 
And In Ev. Joh. tract, xvi.: Prodigium appellatura est quasi porrodicium, 
quod porro dicat, porro significet, et aliquid futurum esse portendat! 
See Pauly, Real-Enoyclopadie, vol. ii. p. 1139. 

^ Occasionally oiintiov loses its special and higher signification, and is 
used simply as = rkpnc. Herod hoped to have seen some ‘ sign ’ 
wrought by Christ (Luke xxiii. 8), but few things he would have desired 
less than a sign or indication of a present God j what he wanted was 
some glaring feat to set him agape—a or, more properly yet, a 

in the lowest sense of the word. 


OF THE iMIBACLES. 


5 


At the same time it may be convenient here to observe 
that the ^sign’ is not of necessity a miracle, although only 
as such it has a place in our discussion. Many a common 
matter may be a ‘ sign ’ or seal set to the truth of some 
word, the announcement of which goes along with it; so 
that when that ‘ sign ’ comes true, it may be accepted as 
a pledge that the greater matter, which was, as it were, 
bound up with it, shall also come true in its time. Thus 
the Angels give to the shepherds for ^ a sign’ their finding 
of the Child wrapt in swaddling clothes in a manger (Luke 

ii. 12, cf. Exod. iii. 12).^ Samuel gives to Saul three 
‘ signs ’ that God has indeed appointed him king over 
Israel, and only the last of these is linked with aught 
supernatural (i Sam. x. 1-9). The prophet gave Eli the 
death of his two sons as a ^ sign ’ that his threatening 
word should come true (i Sam. ii. 34, cf. Jer. xliv. 29, 38)* 
God gave to Gideon a ^ sign ’ in the camp of the Midian- 
ites of the victory which he should win (Judg. vii. 9-15), 
though the word does not happen to occur* (cf. 2 Kin. vii. 

^ Cf. Virgil, viii. 42-45, 81-83. 

^ The words T^p ig and apufiov stand linked together, not merely in the 
New Testament (Acts ii. 22; iv. 30; 2 Cor. xii. 12; John iv. 48), but 
frequently in the Old (Exod. vii. 3, 9; xi. 9 ; Deut. iv. 34; vi. 22, and 
often; Neh. ix. 10 ; Isai. viii. 18 ; xx. 3 ; Dan. iv. 2; vi. 27 ; Ps. Ixxxvii. 
43 ; civ. 27; cxxxiv. 9, LXX) ; and no less in profane Greek (Polybius, 

iii. 112, 8; ^lian, V. Jl. xii. 57; Josephus, Antiqq. xx. 8, 6; Philo, 
X)e Vit. Mos. i. 16; Plutarch, Sept. Sap. Conv. iii.). The distinction 
between them, as though the Apag were the moj'e wonderful, the apptTov 
the less so,—as though it would be a (xrjpHov to heal the sick, a repag to 
open the blind eyes, or to raise the dead (so Ammonius, Cat. in Joh. 

iv. 48 : repag Icrri to irapa ^ucrir, olov to avol^ai d(p 9 a\p,ovg Ti<(p\Cjv Kai fyelpai 

j’fKQov • (TTjfiHOV Tt TO ovK Trjg <pv(T((iJC, olov icTTiv IdaaaOoi appuxTTor^ 

is quite untenable, however frequent among some of the Greek Fathers 
(see Suicer, Thes. \ v. apptlov). Neither will Origen’s distinction stand 
(in Rom. xv. 19) : Signa appellantur, in quibus cum sit aliquid mirabile, 
indicatur quoque aliquid futurum. Prodigia vero in quibus tantum- 
modo aliquid mirabile ostenditur. Bather the same miracle is upon 
one side a rlpac, on another a a-ppCiov ; and the words most often refer 
not to different classes of miracles, but to different qualities in the 
saine miracles; so Fritzsche: Eandem rem diverse restimatam expri- 
munt; and Lampe (Comm, in Joh. vol. i. p. 513) ' Eadem miracula dici 
nossunt signa, quatenus aliquid sen occultum sen futurum docent; et 
-•rodigia (Tipara), quatenus aliquid extraordinarium, quod stuporem 


6 


ON THE NAMES 


2, 17-20). Or it is possible for a man, under a strong 
conviction that the hand of God is leading him, to set 
such or such a contingent event as a ‘ sign ’ to himself, 
the falling out of ’which in this way or in that he will 
accept as an intimation from God of what He would have 
him to do. Examples of this also are not uncommon in 
Scripture (Gen. xxiv. 14-21; Judg. vi. 36-40; i Sam. 
xiv. 8-13). Yery curious, and standing by themselves, 
are the ‘ signs ’ which shall only come to pass, after that 
of which they were the signs has actually befallen; but 
which shall still serve to confirm it, as having been 
wrought directly of God; thus see Exod. iii. 12; 2 Kin. 
xix. 29. 


3. Frequently also the miracles are styled ‘powers ’ or 
‘mighty worlcs,’ that is, of God.^ As in the term ^ wonder ’ 
or ‘ miracle,’ the effect is transferred and gives a name to 
the cause, so here the cause gives its name to the effect.^ 
The ‘poiver’ dwells originally in the divine Messenger 
(Acts vi. 8 ; x. 38 ; Eom. xv. 19); is one with which he is 
himself equipped of God. Christ is thus in the highest 
sense that which Simon blasphemously suffered himself to 
be named, ‘ The great Power of God ’ (Acts viii. 10). But 
then, by an easy transition, the word comes to signify the 
exertions and separate puttings forth of this power. 
These are ^ powers ’ in the plural, although the same wbrA I 

excitat, sistunt. Hinc sequitur stgnorum notionem latius patere, quain T 
prodigiorum. Omnia prodigia sunt signa, quia in ilium usum a^ Deo 1 
dispensata, ut arcanum indicent. Sed omnia signa non sunt 
quia ad signandum res caelestes aliquando etiani res communes adhi- 
bentur. Of. 2 Chron. xxxii. 24, 31; where at ver. 24 that is‘‘called a ^ 
ar]fit'inv, which at ver. 31 is a rspag (LXX). See my Synonyms of tlie 
New Testament, § 91. 

^ Avvapeig = virtutes. 

* With this i^ovo'ia is related, which yet only once occurs to de¬ 
signate a miracle. They are termed tvUla (Luke xiii. 17), as being 
works in which the of God came eminently out (see John ii. 11; 
xi. 40), and which in return caused men to glorify Him (Mark ii. 12). 
They are peyaXtla {= magnalia, Luke i. 49), as outcomings of the gi'eat^ 
ness of God’s power. 


OF THE MIRACLES. 


7 


is now translated in our Yersion ^wonderful works ’ (Matt, 
vii. 22), and now, ^mighty works’ (Matt. xi. 20; Mark 
vi. 14; Luke x. 13), and still more frequently, ‘miracles’ 
(Acts ii. 22; xix. Ji ; I Cor. xii. 10, 28; Gal. iii. 5) ; in 
this last case giving such tautologies as this, ‘miracles 
and wonders ’ (Acts ii. 22 ; Heb. ii. 4); and obscuring for 
us the express purpose of the word, pointing as it does to 
new poiuers which have entered, and are working in, this 
world of ours. 

These three terms, ‘ wonders,’ ‘ signs,’ and ‘ powers,’ 
occur three times in connexion with one another (Acts 
ii. 22 ; 2 Cor. xii. 12; 2 Thess. ii. 9), although on each 
occasion in a different order. They are all, as has already 
been noted in the case of two of them, rather descriptive 
of different aspects of the same works, than themselves 
different classes of works.^ An example of one of our 
Lord’s miracles will illustrate what I say. The healing 
of the paralytic (Mark ii. 1-12) was a wonder, for they 
who beheld it ‘ were all amazed ; ’ it was a power, for the 
man at Christ’s word ‘ arose, took up his bed, and went 
out before them all; ’ it was a sign, for it gave token that 
One greater than men deemed was among them; it stood 
in connexion with a higher fact of which it was the sign 
and seal (cf. i Kin. xiii. 3; 2 Kin. i. 10), being wrought 
that thej^ might ‘ know that the Son of man hath power 
on earth to forgive sins.’ ^ 

^ Pelt’s definition (Comm. i 7 i Thess. p. 179) is brief and good; 
Parum differunt tria ista ^vvaniig, atjuua, rspara. Avva^uq numero sin- 
gulari tamen est vis miraculorum edendorimi; arifxCta qiiatenus com- 
probandae inserviunt doctrinae sive missioni divinae; rkpara portenta 
8unt,.quae admirationem et stuporem excitant. Cf. Calvin on a Cor. 
xii. I ^ : Signa porro vocantur, quod non sunt inania spectacula, sed quae 
destinata sunt docendis hominibus. Prodigia, quod sua novitate experge- 
facere homines debent, et percellere. Potentiae aut virtutes, quod sunt 
magis insignia specimina divinae potentiae, quam quae cernimus in ordi- 
nario naturae cursu. 

* Of the verbs connected with these nouns we may observe in the 
first three Evangelists, aiipna h^ovai (Matt. xii. 39 ; xxiv. 24; Mark viii. 
12), pnd still more frequently Sivdpug 7 :oith> (Matt. vii. 22; xiii. 58; 


8 


ON THE NAMES OF THE MIRACLES, 


4. Eminently significant is another term by which St, 
John very frequently names the miracles. They are con,- 
stantly for him simply ‘ works (v. 3^? 21; x. 25? 

38; xiv. II, 12; XV. 24; cf. Matt. xi. 2); as though the 
wonderful were only the natural form of working for Him 
who is dwelt in by all the fulness of God; He must, out 
of the necessity of his higher being, bring forth these 
works greater than man’s. They are the periphery of 
that circle whereof He is the centre. The great miracle 
is the Incarnation; all else, so to speak, follows naturally 
and of course. It is no wonder that He whose name is 
‘ Wonderful ’ (Isai. ix. 6 ) does works of wonder; the only 
wonder would be if He did them not.^ The sun in the 
heavens is itself a wonder; but it is not a wonder that, 
being what it is, it rays forth its effluences of light and 
heat. These miracles are the fruit after its kind which 
the divine tree brings forth; and may, with a deep truth, 
be styled the ^ works ’ ^ of Christ, with no further addition 
or explanation. 

Mark ix. 39, &c.). Neither phrase occurs in St. John, hut aruxHa ttouiv 
continually (ii. 11 ; iii. a ; iv. 54.; &c.), which is altogether wanting in 
the earlier Evangelists 5 hut occurs in Acts (vii. 36 ; xv. 12) and in the 
hevelation (xiii. 13; xix. 20). Once St. John has aijiida StiKivuv 
(ii. 18). ^ 

' The miracles of the Old Testament are called (pya, Heh. iii. 9; 
Ps. xciv. 9, LXX. 

* Augustine (Iti Ev. Joh. tract, xvii.) : Mirum non esse dehet a Dec 

factum miraculum.Magis gaudere et admirari dehemus quia 

Dominus noster et Salvator Jesus Christus homo factus est, quam quod 
divina inter homines Deus fecit. 

^ This interpretation of fpynr, as used hy St. John, has sometimes been 
called in question, and hy this word has been understood the sum total 
of his acts and his teachings, his words and his works, as they came 
under the eyes of men ; not indeed excluding the miracles, hut including 
very much besides. The one passage urged in proof with any apparent 
force (John xvii. 4) is beside the question ; for that tpyov in the singular 
may, and here does, signify his whole work and task, is beyond all doubt; 
but that his tpya are his miracles, the following passages, v. 36 ; x. 25, 
32, 38; xiv. 11; XV. 24; to which others might be added, decisively 
prove. 



CHAPTEE 11 . 


TUE MIRACLES AND NATURE. 

W HEEEUsT, it may be asked, does tbe miracie dider 
from any event in tbe ordinary course of nature? 
For that too is wonderful; the fact that it is a marvel of 
continual recurrence may rob it, subjectively, of our ad¬ 
miration; we may be content to look at it with a dull 
incurious eye, and to think we find in its constant repeti¬ 
tion the explanation of its law, even as we often find in 
this a reason for excusing ourselves altogether from 
wonder and reverent admiration ; ^ yet it does not remain 
the less a marvel still. 

To this question some have answered, that since all is 
thus marvellous, since the grass growing, the seed sprout¬ 
ing the sun rising, are as much the result of powers 

^ See Augustine De Gen. ad Lit. xii. i8 ; 7 )e Civ. Dei, xxi. 8, 3 ; and 
Cregory the Great {IIow.. xxvi. in Evang.') : Quotidiana Dei miracula ex 
Rssiduitate viluerunt. Cf. Cicero, De Nat. Dear. ii. 38 ; and Lucretius, 
ii. 1027-1038 :— 

Nil adeo magnum, nec tarn mirabile quidquam 
Principio, quod non minuant mirarier omnes 
Paulatim: ut caeli clariim purumque colorem, 

Quemque in se cohibent palantia sidera passim, 
liunaeque, et soli praeclara luce nitorem : 

Omnia qufe si nunc primum mortalibus adsint. 

Ex improviso ceu sint objecta repente, 

Quid magis bis rebus poterat mirabile dici, 

Aut minus ante quod auderent fore credere gentes f 
Nil, ut opinor; ita hsec species miranda fuisset; 

Quum tibi jam nemo fessus satiate videndi 
Suspicere in cseli dignatur lucida templa. 


10 


THE MIRACLES 


which we cannot trace or measure, as the water turned 
into wine, or the sick healed by a word, or the blind 
restored to vision by a touch, there is therefore no such 
thing as a miracle, eminently so called. We have no 
right, they say, in the mighty and complex miracle of 
nature which encircles us on every side, to separate off in 
an arbitrary manner some certain facts, and to affirm of 
this and that that they are wonders, and all the rest 
ordinary processes of nature; but rather we must confine 
ourselves to one language or the otlier, and count all 
miracle, or nothing. 

But this, however at first sight it may seem very Oeep 
and true, is indeed most shallow and fallacious. There is 
quite enough in itself and in its purposes to distinguish 
that which we call by this name, from all with which it is 
thus sought to be confounded, and in which to be lost. 
The distinction indeed which is sometimes drawn, that in 
the miracle God is immediately working, and in other 
events is leaving it to the laws which He has established 
to work, cannot at all be allowed: for it rests on a dead 
mechanical view of the universe, altogether remote from 
the truth. The clock-maker makes his clock, and leaves it; 
the ship-builder builds and launches his ship, which others 
navigate; but the world is no curious piece of mechanism 
which its Maker constructs, and then dismisses from his 
hands, only from time to time reviewing and repairing it, 
but, as our Lord says, ‘ My Father worketh hitherto, and 
I work’ (John V. 17); He ‘ upholdeth all things by the 
word of his power ’ ’ (Heb. i. 3). And to speak of ‘laws 

^ Augustine: Sunt qui arbitrantur tantummodq mundum ipsum fact¬ 
um a Deo; cetera jam fieri ab ipso mimdo, sicut ille ordinavit et jussit, 
Deum autem ipsum nibil operari. Contra quos profertur ilia sententia 

Domini, Pater mens usque adhuc operatur, et ego operor.Neque 

enim, sicut a structura sedium, cum fabricaverit quis, abscedit; atque illo 
cessante et absente stat opus ejus; ita mundus vel ictu oculi stare poterit, 
si ei Deus regimen suum subtraxerit. So Melancbtbon {In loo. de Crea- 
iione) : Infirniitas bumana etiamsi cogitat Deum esse conditorem, tamen 
p-)stea ima^inatur, ut faber discedit a navi exstructa et relinquit earn 



AND NATURE. 


11 


of God/ ‘ laws of nature/ may become to us a language 
altogether deceptive, and biding the deeper reality from 
our eyes. Laws of God exist only for us. It is a will of God 
for Himself.^ That will indeed, being the will of highest 
wisdom and love, excludes all wilfulness ; it is a will upon 
which we can securely count; from the past expressions 
of it we can.presume its future, and so we rightfully call 
it a law. But still from moment to moment it is a will; 
each law, as we term it, of nature is only that which we 
have learned concerning this will in that particular region 
of its activity. To say then that there is more of the will 
of God in a miracle than in any other work of his, is 
insufS-cient. 

Yet while we deny the conclusion, that since all is won¬ 
der, therefore the miracle, commonly so called, is only in 
the same way as the ordinary processes of nature a mani¬ 
festation of the presence and power of God, we must not 
with this deny the truth which lies in this statement. 
All is wonder; to make a man is at least as great a 
marvel as to raise a man from the dead.’ The seed that 
multiplies in the furrow is as marvellous as the bread that 
multiplied in Christ’s hands. The miracle is not a greater 
manifestation of God’s power than those ordinary and 
ever-repeated processes; but it is a different manifesta¬ 
tion.* By those other God is speaking at all times and to 

nautis; ita Deum discedere a suo opere, et relinqui creaturas tantum 
propriae gubernationi; baec imaginatio magnam caliginem offundit animia 
et parit dubitationes. Goethe has well asked, 

Was war’ ein Gott, der nur von aussen stiesse, 

Im Kreis das All’ am Finger laufen liesse ? 

Ihm ziemt’s, die Welt im Innern zu bewegen, 

Natur in sich, sich in Natur zii hegen, 

So dass, was in ihm lebt und webt und ist, 

Nie seine Kraft, nie seinen Geist vermisst. 

* Augustine (Be Civ. Dei, xxi. 8) : Dei voluntas natura rerum est. 

'i- Augustine (Ser^n. ccxlii. i) : In homine carnali tota regula intelli- 
gendi est consuetudo cernendi. Quod solent videre credunt: quod 
Don fcolent. non credunt. . . . Majora quidem miracula sunt, tot 


12 


the miracles 


all the world; they are a vast unbroken revelation of 
Him. ‘The invisible things of Him are clearly seen, 
being understood by the things that are made, even his 
eternal power and Godhead’ (Horn. i. 20). Yet from the 
very circumstance that nature is thus speaking evermore 
to all, that this speaking is diffused over all time, ad¬ 
dressed unto all men, that its sound has gone out into all 
lands, from the very constancy and universality of this 
language, it may fail to make itself heard. It cannot be 
said to stand in nearer relation to one man than to an¬ 
other, to confirm one man’s word more than that of others, 
to address one man’s conscience more than that of every 
other man. However it may sometimes have, it must 
often lack, a peculiar and personal significance. But in 
the miracle, wrought in the sight of some certain men, 
and claiming their special attention, there is a speaking 
to them in particular. There is then a voice in nature 
which addresses itself directly to them, a singling of them 
out from the multitude. It is plain that God has now a 
peculiar word which they are to give heed to, a message to 
which He is bidding them to listen.^ 

An extraordinary divine causality, and not that ordi¬ 
nary which we acknowledge everywhere and in everything, 

quotidie homines nasci qui non erant, quam pancos resiirrexisse qui 
erant; et tamen ista miracula non consideratione comprehensa sunt, sed 
assiduitate viluerunt. Cf. Gregory the Great, Moral, vi. 15. 

^ All this is brought out in a very instructive discussion on the miracle, 
which finds place in Augustine’s great dogmatic work, De Trinit. iii. 5, 
and extends to the chapters upon either side, being the largest statement 
of his views upon the subject which anywhere finds place in his works : 
Quis attrahit humorem per radicem vitis ad botrum et vinum facit, nisi 
Dens, qui et homine plantante et rigante incrementum dat ? Sed cum 
ad nutum Domini aqua in vinum inusitata celeritate conversa est, etiam 
stultis fatentibus, vis divina declarata est. Quis arbusta fronde et flore 
vestit solemniter, nisi Deus ? Verum cum floruit virga sacerdotis Aaron, 

collocuta est quodam modo cum dubitante humanitate divinitas. 

Cum fiunt ilia continuato quasi quodam fluvio labentium manantiumque 
rerum, et ex occulto in promptum, atque ex prompto in occultum, usitato 
itinere transeuntium, naturalia dicuntur : cum vero admonendis hominU 
bus-inusitata mutabilitate ingerimtur, magnalia nominantur. 



AND NATUBE, 


n 

belongs, then, to tlie essence of the miracle; powers of 
God other than those which have always been working; 
snch, indeed, as most seldom or never have been working 
before. The unresting activity of God, which at other 
times hides and conceals itself behind the veil of what we 
term natural laws, does in the miracle unveil itself; it 
steps out from its concealment, and the hand which works 
is laid bare. Beside and beyond * the ordinary operations 
of nature, higher powers (higher, not as coming from a 
higher source, but as bearing upon higher ends) intrude 
and make themselves felt even at the very sj^rings and 
sources of her power. 

While it is of the very essence of the miracle that it 
should be thus a new thing,’ it is not with this denied 
that the natural itself may become miraculous to us by 
the way in which it is timed, by the ends which it is made 
to serve. It is indeed true that aught which is perfectly 
explicable from the course of nature and history is assur¬ 
edly no miracle in the most proper sense of the word. At 
the same time the finger of God may be so plainly dis¬ 
cernible in it, there may be in it so remarkable a converg¬ 
ence of many unconnected causes to a single end, it may so 
meet a crisis in the lives of men, or in the onward march 
of the kingdom of God, may stand in such noticeable 
relation with God’s great work of redemption, that even 
while it is plainly explicable by natural causes, while there 
were such, perfectly adequate to produce the effects, we 
yet may be entirely justified in terming it a miracle, a 
providential, although not an absolute, miracle. Abso¬ 
lute it cannot be called, since there were known causes 
perfectly capable of bringing it about, and, these existing, 
it would be superstition to betake ourselves to others, or 
to seek to disconnect it from these. Yet the natural 
may in a manner lift itself up into the miraculous, by the 

* Not, as we shall see the greatest theologians have always earnestly 
contended, contra naturam, hut prater naturam and supra naturam. 


14 


THE MIRACLES 


moment at Tvliicli it falls out, bj the purposes wbieh it 
is made to fulfil. It is a subjective wonder, a wonder for 
us, tbougb not an objective, not a wonder in itself. 

Thus many of tbe plagues of Egypt were tbe natural 
plagues of tbe land,^—these, it is true, raised and quick¬ 
ened into far direr tlian their usual activity. In itself it 
was nothing miraculous that grievous swarms of flies 
should infest the houses of the Egyptians, or that flights 
of locusts should spoil their fields, or that a murrain should 
destroy their cattle. None of these visitations were, or 
are, unknown in that land; but the intensity of all these 
plagues, the dread succession in which they followed on 
one another, their connexion with the word of Moses which 
went before, with Pharaoh’s trial which was proceeding, 
with Israel’s deliverance which they helped onward, the 
order of -their coming and going, all these entirely justify 
us in calling them ^ the signs and wonders of Egypt,’ even 
as such is evermore the scriptural language about them 
(Deut. iv. 34; Ps. Ixxviii. 43; Acts vii. 36). It is no 
absolute miracle that a coin should be found in a fish’s 
mouth (Matt. xvii. 27), or that a lion should meet a man 
and slay him (i Kin. xiii. 24), or that a thunderstorm 
should happen at an unusual period of the year (i Sam. 
xii. 16-19); y^t these circumstances may be so timed 
for strengthening faith, for punishing disobedience, for 
awakening repentance, they may serve such high purposes 
in God’s moral government, that we at once range them 
m the catalogue of miracles, without seeking to make an 
anxious discrimination between the miracle absolute and 
providential.^ Especially have they a right to their place 

' See Hengstenberg, Lie Bucher Mos^s und Aegypten, pp. 93-129. 

* The attempt to exhaust the histoiy of our Lord’s life of miracles by 
the assumption of wonderful fortuitous coincidences is singularly self- 
defeating. These might pass once or twice; but that such happy chances 
should on every occasion recur, what is this for one who knows even but 
a little of the theory of probabilities ? not the delivering the history of 
its marvellous element, but the exchanging of one set of marvels for 
another. If it be urged that this was not mere hazard, what manner of 


AM) ITATUnE, 


*5 


among these, when (as in each of the instances alluded to 
above) the final event is a sealing of a foregoing word from 
the Lord; for so, as prophecy, as miracles of his foreJmoW’- 
ledge, they claim that place, even if not as miracles of his 
power. It is true, of course, of these even more than of 
any other, that they exist only for the religious mind, 
for the man who believes that God rules, and not merely 
in power, but in wisdom, in righteousness, and in love; 
for him they will be eminently signs, signs of a present 
working God. In the case of the more absolute miracle 
it will be sometimes possible to extort from the ungodly, 
as of old from the magicians of Egypt, the unwilling con¬ 
fession, ‘ This is the finger of God ’ (Exod. viii. 19); but 
in the case of these this will be well nigh impossible ; 
since there is always the natural solution in which they 
may take refuge, beyond which they will refuse, and 
beyond which it will be impossible to compel them, to 
proceed. 

But while the miracle is not thus nature, so neither is it 
against nature. That language, however common, is wholly 
unsatisfactory, which speaks of these wonderful works of 
God as violations of a natural law. Beyond nature, heyond 
and above the nature which we know, they are, but not 
contrary to it.^ Nor let it be said that this distinction 
is an idle one; so far from being idle, Spinoza’s whole 

person then must we conclude Him to be, whom nature was alwaj^s thus 
at such pains to serve and to seal ? 

^ It is Impossible to accept the assistance which Perrone, the most in- 
duential dogmatic writer in the modern Roman Catholic Church, offers 
us here. He, in a nominalism pushed to a most extravagant excess, de¬ 
nies that the miracle is or can be either against or above the laws of 
nature, seeing that in fact there are no such laws for it to violate or to 
transcend, no working of God in the external world according to any 
fixed and established rules - (Prcelect. Theol. vol. i. p. 47): Deus non 
regit genera vel species, quse non sunt nisi idese abstractse, sed regit indi- 
vidua, q^use sola realia sunt, neq^ue regit legibus universalibus, quse 
pariter non sunt nisi in conceptu nostro, sed re^t voluntate peculiari 
individua singula. Extremes meet: he too, denying any law, has made 
the miracle as impossible as those who affirm the law to be absolutely 
Immutable. 


i6 


THE MIRACLES 


assault upon the miracles (not his real objections, for they 
lie much deeper, but his assault turns, as we shall see, 
upon the advantage w^hich he has known how to take of 
this faulty statement of the truth; and, when that has 
been rightly stated, becomes at once beside the mark. 
The miracle is not thus unnatural ; nor could it be such; 
since the unnatural, the contrary to order, is of itself the 
ungodly, and can in no way therefore be affirmed of a 
divine work, such as that with which we have to do. The 
very idea of the world, as more than one name which it 
bears testifies, is that of an order ; that, therefore, which 
comes in to enable it to realize this idea which it has lost, 
will scarcely itself be a disorder. So far from this, the 
true miracle is a higher and a purer nature, coming down 
out of the world of untroubled harmonies into this world 
of ours, which so many discords have jarred and disturbed, 
and bringing this back again, though it be but for one 
mysterious prophetic moment, into harmony with that 
higher.^ The healing of the sick can in no way be termed 
against nature, seeing that the sickness which was healed 
was against the true nature of man, that it is sickness 
which is abnormal, and not health. The healing is the 
restoration of the primitive order. We should see in the 
miracle not the infraction of a law, but the neutralizing of 
a lower law, the suspension of it for a time by a higher. 


^ Tract, Theol, Pol. vi. De MiracuUs, 

^ Augustine {Con. Faust. Ivi. 3) : Contra naturam non incongrue dici- 
mus aliquid Deum facere, quod facit contra id quod novimus in natura. 
Hanc enim etiani appellamus naturam, cognitum nobis cursum solitumque 
naturae, contra quern cum Deus aliquid facit, magnalia vel mirabilia 
nominantur. Contra illam vero summam naturae legem a notitia remo- 
tam sive impiorum sive adhuc infirmorum, tarn Deus nullo modo facit 
quam contra seipsum non facit. Cf. xxvi. 3: Deus creator et conditor 
omnium naturarum nihil contra naturam facit, quia id est naturale caique 
rei^ quod facit a quo est omnis modus, numerus, et ordo naturm. Cf. 
xxix. 2 5 and Ee Civ. Lei, xxi. 8. The speculations of the great thinkers 
of the thirteenth century, on the subject of miracles, and especially on 
this part of the subject, are well brought together by Neander (Kirch, 
Gesch. vol. V. pp. 910-925). 


AND NATURE, 


17 


Of tliis abundant analogous examples are evermore going 
forward before our eyes. Continually we bebold in tbe 
world around us lower laws held in restraint by higher, 
mechanic by dynamic, chemical by vital, physical by 
moral; yet we do not say, when the lower thus gives place 
in favour of the higher, that there was any violation of 
law, or that anything contrary to nature came to pass;' 
rather we acknowledge the law of a greater freedom swal¬ 
lowing up the law of a lesser. 

When Spinoza affirmed that nothing can happen in 
nature which opposes its universal laws, he acutely saw 
that even then he had not excluded the miracle, and there¬ 
fore, to clench the exclusion, added—^ or which does not 
follow from the same laws.’ But all which experience can 
teach us is, that these powers which are working in our 
world will not reach to these effects. Whence dare we to 
conclude, that because none which we know will bring 
them about, so none exist which will do so ? They exceed 
the laws of our nature, bp.t it does not therefore follow 
that they exceed the laws of all nature. If the animals 
were capable of a reflective act, man would appear a 
miracle to them, as the Angels do to us, and as the 
animals would themselves appear to a lower circle of 
organic life. The comet is a miracle as regards our solar 
system 5 that is, it does not own the laws of our system, 
neither do those laws explain it. Yet is there a higher 
and wider law of the heavens, whether fully discovered or 
not, in which its motions are included as surely as those 
of the planets which stand in immediate relation to our 
sun. When I lift my arm, the law of gravitation is not, 
as far as my arm is concerned, denied or annihilated; it 
exists as much as ever, but is held in suspense by the 
higher law of my will. The chemical laws which would 
bring about decay in animal substances still subsist, even 

* See a very intercf^ting discussion upon this subject in Augustine, Di 
Gen, ad Lit, vi. 14-18. 


i8 


THE MIRACLES 


wlien they are restrained and hindered by the salt \vbicli 
keeps those substances from corruption. The law of sin 
in a regenerate man is held in continual check by the law 
of the spirit of life; yet is it in his members still, not in¬ 
deed working, for a mightier law has stepped in and now 
holds it in abeyance, but still there, and ready to work, 
did that higher law cease from its more effectual operation. 
What in each of these cases is wrought may be against 
one particular law, that law being contemplated in its 
isolation, and rent away from the complex of laws, whereof 
it forms only a part. But no law does stand thus alone, 
and it is not against, but rather in entire harmony with, 
the system of laws; for the law of those laws is, that 
where powers come into conflict, the weaker shall give 
place to the stronger, the lower to the higher.^ In the 
miracle, this world of ours is drawn into and within a 
higher order of things; laws are then working in it, which 
are not the laws of its fallen condition, but laws of 
mightier range and higher perfection; and as such they 
claim to make themselves felt; they assert the preemi¬ 
nence and predominance which are rightly their own.^ A 

^ In remarkable words the author of the Wisdom of Solomon (x ix. ) 
describes bow at the passage of the Eed Sea all natiu'e was in its kind 
moulded and fashioned anew (?) Kriaig irdKiv dvojSfv SuTvn-ovro), that it 
might serve God’s purposes for the deliverance of his people, and punish¬ 
ment of his enemies (cf. xi. i6, 17); and Sedulius ( Carm, Rasch. i. 85'): 

Subditur omnis 

Imperiis natura tuis; rituque soluto 

Transit in adversas jussu dominante figuras. 

® Martensen {Christ. Dogmatik, § 17) : Der Einheitspimkt des Natiir- 
lichen und Uebernatiirlichen liegd in der teleologischen Bestimmung 
der Natur fiir das Eeich Gottes, und in der damit gegebenen Empfang- 
lichkeit und Bildungsfahigkeit der Natur fiir die ubernatiirliche 
Schopferthatigkeit. The whole passage is admirable, but too long to 
quote. On the manner in which God in the old creation did not exclude, 
the possibilities of the new, but rather left room for them, Augustine hasl 
in more places than one a very interesting discussion; here, as in such a> 
multitude of other instances, anticipating so much of the speculation of 
the later world. Thus Be Gen. ad Lit. x. 17: Elementa mundi hujuS 
corporei habeat definitam vim qualitatemque suam, quid unumquodquo 
valeat vel non valeat, quid de quo fieri possit vel non possit. Supes’ 


AND NATUDE. 


19 


familiar illustration borrowed from our own cliurck-system 
of feasts and fasts may make this clearer. It is tbe rule 
here, that if the festival of the Nativity fall on a day which 
was designated in the ordinary calendar for a fast, the 
former shall displace the latter, and the day shall be ob¬ 
served as a festival. Shall we therefore say that the 
Church has awkwardly contrived two systems which at this 
point may, and sometimes do, come into collision with one 
another? and not rather admire her more complex law, 
and note how in the very concurrence of the two, with the 
displacement of the poorer by the richer, she brings out 
her sense that holy joy is a loftier thing even than holy 
sorrow, and shall at last swallow it up altogether? ^ 

hiinc autem motum cursumque reruni naturalem, potestas Creatoria 
habet apud se posse de his omnibus facere aliud quam eorum quasi 
seminales rationes habent, non tamen id quod non in eis posuit, ut de his 
fieri vel ab ipso possit. Neque enim potentia temeraria sed sapientiae 
virtute omnipotens est; et hoc de unaquaque re in tempore suo facit, 
quod ante in ea fecit ut possit. Alius ergo est rerum modus, quo ilia 
herba sic germ in at, ilia sic; ilia mtas parit, ilia non parit; homo loqui 
potest, pecus non potest. Horura et talium modorum rationes non 
tantum in Deo sunt, sed ab illo etiam rebus creatis inditac atque con- 
creatae. Ut autem lignum de terra excisum, aridum, perpolitum, sine radice 
ulla, sine terra et aqua repente floreat et fructum gignat, ut per juventam 
sterilis fcemina in senecta pariat, ut asina loquatur, et si quid ejusmodi 
est, dedit quidem naturis quas creayit ut ex eis et haec fieri possent, 
(neque enim ex eis yel ille faceret quod ex eis fieri non posse ipse 
prsefigeret, quoniam se ipso non est nec ipse potentior,) verumtaraen 
alio modo dedit, ut non haec haberent in motu naturali, sed in eo quo 
ita creata essent, ut eorum natura yoluntati potentiori amplius sub- 
jaceret. 

^ Thus Aquinas, whose greatness and depth upon the subject of 
miracles I well remember hearing Coleridge exalt, and painfully contrast 
with the modern theology on the same subject (^Sum. Theol. pars i. 
qu. 105, art. 6) : A qualibet causa derivatur aliquis ordo in suos effectus, 
cum quselibet causa habeat rationem principii. Et ideo secundum 
multiplicationem causarum multiplicantur et ordines, quorum unus 
continetur sub altero, sicut et causa continetur sub causa. Unde causa 
superior non continetur sub ordine causae inferioris, sed e converse. 
Cujus exemplum apparet in rebus humanis. Nam ex patrefamilias 
dependet ordo domus, qui continetur sub ordine civitatis, qui procedit a 
civitatis rectore: cum et hie contineatur sub ordine regis, a quo totum 
regnum ordinatur. Si ergo ordo rerum consideretur prout dependet a 
prima causa, sic contra jerum ordinem Deus facere non potesf;. Si enim 
sic faceret, faceret contra suam praescientiam aut voluntatem aut bonita- 
2 


20 


THE MIRACLES 


It is witli these wonders which have been, exactly as it 
will be with those wonders which we look for in regard of 
onr own mortal bodies, and this physical universe. We do 
not speak of these changes which are in store for this and 
those, as violations of law. We should not speak of the 
resurrection of the body as something contrary to nature; 
as unnatural; yet no power now working upon our bodies 
could bring it about; it must be wrought by some power 
not yet displayed, which God has kept in reserve. So, too, 
the mighty transformation which is in store for the out¬ 
ward world, out of which it shall come forth a new heaven 
and a new earth, Hhe regeneration’ of Matt. xix. i8, far 
exceeds any energies now working in the world, to bring 
it to pass (however there may be predispositions for it now, 
starting points from which it will proceed); yet it so be¬ 
longs to the true idea of the world, now so imperfectly 
realized, that when it does take place, it will be felt to be 
the truest nature, which only then at length shall have 
come perfectly to the birth. The miracles of earth, as 
Jean Paul has said, are the laws of heaven. 

The miracles, then, not being against natm’e, however 
they may be beside and beyond it, are in no respect slights 
cast upon its ordinary and every-day workings; but rather, 
when contemplated aright, are an honouring of these, in 
the witness which they render to the source from which 
these also originally proceed. Por Christ, healing a sick 
man with his word, is in fact claiming in this to be the 
lord and author of all the healing powers which have ever 
exerted their beneficent infiuence on the bodies of men, 
and saying, will prove this fact, which you are ever 

tern. Si vero consideretur reriim ordo, prout dependet a qiialibet secun- 
darum causarum, sic Deus potest facere p'ceter ordinem rerum; quia 
ordini secundarum causarum ipse non est subj ectus; sed tails ordo ei 
subjicitur, quasi ab eo procedens, non per necessitatem naturae, sed per 
arbitrium voluntatis ; potuisset enim et alium ordinem rerum instituere. 
And after a long discussion in his work Con. Gentiles, he thus defines 
the miracles (ii. 102) : Ilia igitur proprie miracula dicenda sunt, quae 
divinitus fiunt praeter ordinem communiter observatum in rebus. 


AND NATURE, 


21 


losing sight of, that in Me the fontal power which goes 
forth in a thousand gradual cures resides, by this time 
only speaking a word, and bringing back a man unto 
perfect health; ’—not thus cutting off those other and 
more gradual healings from his person, but truly linking 
them to it.^ So again when He multiplies the bread, when 
He changes the water into wine, what does He but say, 
‘ It is I and no other who, by the sunshine and the shower, 
by the seed-time and the harvest, give food for the use of 
man; and you shall learn this, which you are evermore 
unthankfully forgetting, by witnessing for once or for 
twice, or, if not actually witnessiug, yet having it re¬ 
hearsed in your ears for ever, how the essences of things 
are mine, how the bread grows in my hands, how the 
water, not drawn up into the vine, nor slowly transmuted 
into the juices of the grape, nor from thence exprest in 
the vat, but simply at my bidding, changes into wine. The 
children of this world “ sacrifice unto their net, and burn 
incense to their drag,” but it is I who, giving you in a mo¬ 
ment the draught of fishes which you had yourselves long 
laboured for in vain, will remind you who guides them 
through the ocean paths, and suffers you either to toil long 
and to take nothing, or crowns your labours with a rich 
and unexpected harvest of the sea.’—Even the single 
miracle which wears an aspect of severity, that of the 
withered fig-tree, speaks the same language, for in that 
the same gracious Lord is declaring, ‘ These scourges of 
mine, wherewith I punish your sins, and summon you to 
repentance, continually miss their purpose altogether, or 
need to be repeated again and again; and this mainly 


* Bernard Connor’s Evangelium Medici, seu Medidna Mystica, London, 
1697, awakened some attention at the time of its publication, and drew 
down many suspicions of infidelity on its author (see the Biographic 
JJniverselle under his name). I have not mastered the book, as it seemed 
hardly worth while; but on a slight acquaintance, my impression is that 
these charges against the author are without any ground. The book 
bears on this present part of our subject. 


22 


THE MIRACLES AWL WATURE, 


because you see in tliem only tbe evil accidents of a blind 
nature; but I will sliow you that it is I and no other who 
smite the earth with' a curse, who both can and do send 
these strokes for the punishing of the sins of men.’ 

And we can quite perceive how all this should have been 
necessary. ‘ For if in one sense the orderly workings of 
nature reveal the glory of God (Ps. xix. i-6), in another 
they may hide that glory from our eyes ; if they ought to 
make us continually to remember Him, yet there is danger 
that they lead us to forget Him, until this world around 
us shall prove—not a translucent medium, through which 
we behold Him, but a thick impenetrable curtain, con¬ 
cealing Him wholly from our sight. ‘ There is in every 
miracle,’ says Donne, ‘ a silent chiding of the world, and 
a tacit reprehension of them who require, or who need, 
miracles.’ Did they serve ho other purpose than this, 
namely to testify the liberty of God, and to affirm his 
will, which, however it habitually shows itself in nature, is 
yet more than and above nature, were it only to break a link 
in that chain of cause and effect, which else we should 
come to regard as itself God, as the iron chain of an inex¬ 
orable necessity, binding heaven no less than earth, they 
would serve a great purpose, they would not have been 
wrought in vain. But there are other purposes than these, 
and purposes yet more nearly bearing on the salvation of 
men, to which they serve, and to the consideration of these 
we have now arrived.^ 

' Augustine (Enarr. in Rs. cx. 4.): [Deus] reservans opportune inusitata 
prodigia, quae infirmitas hominis novitati intenta meminerit, cum sint 
ejus miracula quotidiana majora. Tot per universam terram arbores creat, 
et nemo miratur; arefecit verbo unam, et stupefacta sunt corda morta- 
lium. . . . Hoc enim miraculum maxime adtentis cordibus inbaerebit, 
quod assiduitas non vilefecerit. 

^ J. Muller (Le Mirac. J. C. Nat. et Necess. par. i. p. 43) : Etiamsi 
nullus alius miraculorum esset usus, nisi iit absolutam illam divinae 
voluntatis libertatem demonstrent, bumanamque arrogantiam, immodicae 
legis naturalis admirationi junctam, compescant, miracula baud temere 
sssent edita. 


cnAPTEE in. 


Till: AUTHORITY OF MIRACLES. 

I S the miracle to command absolntelj, and without fur¬ 
ther question, the obedience of those in whose sight it 
is done, or to whom it comes as an adequately attested 
fact, so that the doer and the doctrine, without further 
debate, shall be accepted as from God ? It cannot be so, 
for side by side with the miracles which serve for the 
furthering of the kingdom of God, runs another line of 
wonders, the counterworkings of him, who is ever the ape 
of the Most High; who has still his caricatures of the 
holiest; and who knows that in no way can he so realize 
his character of Satan or ‘ the Hinderer,’ as by offering 
that which shall either be accepted instead of the true, or, 
being discovered to be false, shall bring the true into like 
discredit with itself. For that Scripture attributes real 
wonders to him, though miracles wrought in a sphere 
rigidly defined and shut in by the power of God, there 
seems to me no manner of doubt. His wonders are ^ying’ 
(2 Thess. ii. 9), not because in themselves mere illusions 
and jugglery, but because they are wrought to support the 
kingdom of lies.’ The Egyptian magicians, his servants, 

^ Gerhard {Loc. Theoll, loc. xxiii. ii, 274): Antichristi miracula dicun- 
tur mendacia, .... non tarn ratione formes, quasi omnia futura sint 
falsa et adparentia duntaxat, quam ratione^wiV, quia scilicet ad confirma¬ 
tion em mendacii erunt directa. Chrysostom, who explains the passage 
in the other way, that they are ^lying’ quoad formam (ov^kv aXjjfj'ff, 
a/\Xd TTpoQ aTrdrtjv rd Travra), yet suggests the correcter explanation, 


24 


THE AUTHORITY OF 


Btood in relation to a spiritual kingdom as truly as did 
Moses and Aaron. Only when we recognize this, does the 
conflict between those and these come out in its true sig¬ 
nificance. It loses this nearly or altogether, if we con¬ 
template their wonders as mere conjurors’ tricks, dexterous 
sleights of hand, with which they imposed upon Pharaoh 
and his servants; making believe, and no more, that their 
rods also changed into serpents (Exod. vii. ii, 12), that 
they also changed water into blood (Exod. vii. 22). Eather 
was this a conflict not merely between the might of 
king and the power of God; but the gods of Egypt, 
the spiritual powers of wickedness which underlay, ar d 
were the informing soul of, that dark and evil kingdom, 
were in conflict with the God of Israel. In this conflict, 
it is true, their nothingness very soon was apparent; their 
resources came very soon to an end; but yet most truly 
the two unseen kingdoms of light and darkness did then 
in presence of Pharaoh do open battle, each seeking to win 
the king for itself, and to draw him into its own element.’ 


^ hf-^evnfxkvcic, j) eIq \PwSog ayovai. Augustine (I)e Civ. Dei, xx. 19) does 
not absolutely determine for either: Solet ambigi, utrum propterea 
dicta sint signa et prodigia mendacii, quoniam mortales sensus per 
phantasmata decepturus sit [Antichristus] ; ut quod non faciat, facere 
videatiir: an quia ilia ipsa, etiamsi erunt vera prodigia, ad mendaeium 
pertrahent credituros non ea potuisse, nisi divinitus fieri, virtutem diaboli 
nescientes. According to Aquinas they will only be relative wonders 
{Siimm Theol. p. 1% qn. 114^ art. 4) : Daemones possunt facere miracula, 
qii* scilicet homines mirantur, in quantum eorum facultatem et cogni- 
tioneni excedunt. Namyt unus homo in quantum facit allquid quod est 
supra facultatem et cognitionem alteriiis, ducit alium in admirationem sui 
opens, et quodam modo miraculum videatur operari. And again, qu. 110 
art. 4: Miraculum proprie dicitur, cum aliquid fit praeter ordinem natu¬ 
rae. bed non sufficit ad rationem miraculi, si quid fiat prmter ordinem 
naturae aheujus particularis; quia sic, cum aliquis projicit lapidem sur- 
Mim miraculum faceret, cum hoc fit praeter ordinem nature lapidis. 
jX oc eigo aliquid dicitur miraculum, quod fit praeter ordinem totius 
nature create.^ Hoc autem non potest facere nisi Deus. 

r principal argument against this, is the fact that inexplicable 
some modern Egyptian charmers j 

keen anYT ? 'u" Egy'pt, and attestedb^ 

into consideration ail 

winch we know about these msgidane that the^ apparently have always 


MIRACLES. 


25 


Else, unless it had been snch a conflict as this^ what 
meaning wonld snch passages have as that in Moses’ Song, 
‘ Who is like unto thee, 0 Lord, among the gods ’ (Exod. 
XV. ii)? or that earlier, ‘Against all the gods of Egypt I 
will execute judgment; I am the Lord’ (Exod. xii. 12; 
cf. Numb, xxxiii. 4). As it was then, so probably was it 
again at the Incarnation, for Satan’s open encounter of 
our Lord in the wilderness was but one form of his mani¬ 
fold opposition; and we have a hint of a resistance similar 
to that of the Egyptian magicians in the ^ withstanding ’ 
of Paul ascribed to Elymas (Acts xiii. 8; cf. 2 Tim. hi. 8).^ 
But whether at that time it was so, or not, so will it be 
certainly at the end of the world (Matt. xxiv. 24; 2 Thess. 
ii. 9 ; Eev. xiii. 13). Thus it seems that at each great 
crisis and epoch of the kingdom, the struggle between the 
light and the darkness, which has ever been going forward, 
comes out into visible manifestation. 

Yet, while the works of Antichrist and his organs are 
not mere tricks and juggleries, neither are they miracles 
in the very highest sense of the word; they only in part 
partake of the essential elements of the miracle.^ This 

constituted an hereditary guild, that the charmer throws himself into an 
ecstatic state, the question remains, how far there may not be here a 
wreck and surviving fragment of a mightier system, how far the charmers 
do not even now, consciously or unconsciously, bring themselves into 
relation with those evil powers, which more or less remotely do at the 
last underlie every form of heathen superstition. On this subject see 
Ilengstenberg {Die Bucher Mosds mid Aegypten, pp. 97-103). I have 
had no opportunity of consulting Dierenger’s apologetic work. On Heathen 
Magic, Divination, and Soothsaying ; but doubt not that it must contain 
much of interest on this and kindred matters. 

1 According to Gregory the Great {Moral, xxxiv. 3) one of the hardest 
trials of the elect in the last great tribulation will be, the far more 
glorious miracles which Antichrist shall show, than any which the 
Church shall then be allowed to accomplish. Prom the Church signs 
and wonders will be well nigh or altogether withdrawn, while the great¬ 
est and most startling of these will be at his beck. 

2 < Therefore hath God reserved to Himself the power of miracles as a 
prerogative; for the devil does no miracles; the devil and his instru¬ 
ments do but hasten nature, or hinder nature, antedate nature, or 
postdate nature, bring things sooner to pass, or retard them; and how- 


26 


THE AUTHORITY OF 


tliey haye, indeed, in common with, it, that they are real 
works of a power which is suffered to extend thus far, and 
not merely dexterous feats of legerdemain; but this, also, 
which is most different, that they are abrupt, isolated, 
parts of no organic whole ; not the highest harmonies, but 
the deepest discords, of the universe; ^ not the omnipotence 
of God wielding his own world to ends of grace and wis¬ 
dom and love, but evil permitted to intrude into the hidden 
springs of things just so far as may suffice for its own 
deeper confusion in the end, and, in the mean while, for 
the needful trial and perfecting of God’s saints and ser¬ 
vants.® 

This fact, however, that the kingdom of lies has its won¬ 
ders no less than the kingdom of truth, is itself sufficient 
evidence that miracles cannot be appealed to absolutely 
and finally, in proof of the doctrine which the worker of 
them proclaims; and God’s word expressly declares the 
same (Dent. xiii. 1-5). A miracle does not prove the 
truth of a doctrine, or the divine mission of him thait 
brings it to pass. That which alone it claims for him at 
the first is a right to be listened to: it puts him in the 
alternative of being from heaven or from hell. The doc¬ 
trine must first commend itself to the conscience as being 
good, and only then can the miracle seal it as divine,^ 

soever they pretend to oppose nature, yet still it is but upon nature, and 
but by natural means, that they work. Facit mirabilia magna solus, 
says David [Ps. cxxxvi. 4] ; there are mirabilia parva, some lesser won¬ 
ders, that the devil and his instruments. Pharaoh’s sorcerers, can do ; 
but when it comes to mirabilia magna, great wonders, so great as that 
they amount to the nature of a miracle, facit solus, God and God only 
does them.’—Donne, Sermons, p. 215. 

' They have the veritas/ormcz?, but not the veritas^iwA 

* See Augustine, He Trin. iii. 7-9. 

® Jeremy Taylor {Liberty of Prophesying ): 'Although the argument 
drawn from miracles is good to attest a holy doctrine, which by its own 
worth will support itself after way is a little made by miracles j yet of 
itself and by its own reputation it will not support any fabric ; for in¬ 
stead of proving a doctrine to be true, it makes that the miracles them¬ 
selves are suspected to be illusions, if they be pretended in behalf of a 
doctrine which we think we have reason to account false.’ 


MIRACLES. 


27 


But tlie first appeal is from the doctrine to the conscience, 
to the moral nature in man. Bor all revelation presup¬ 
poses in man a power of recognizing the truth when it is 
shown him,—that it will find an answer in him,—that he 
will trace in it the lineaments of a friend, though of a 
friend from whom he has been long estranged, and whom 
he has well nigh forgotten. It is the finding of a trea¬ 
sure, but of a treasure which he himself and no other had 
lost. The denial of this, that there is in man any organ 
by which truth may be recognized, opens the door to the 
most boundless scepticism, is indeed the denial of all that 
is godlike in man. But ‘ he that is of God, heareth God’s 
word,’ and knows it for that which it proclaims itself 
to be. 

It may be objected, indeed. If this be so, if there be 
this inward witness of the truth, what need then of the 
miracle ? to what end does it serve, when the truth has 
accredited itself already ? It has indeed accredited it¬ 
self as good, as from God in the sense that all which is 
good and true is from Him, as whatever was precious in 
the teaching even of heathen sage or poet was from 
Him;—but not as yet as a new word directly from Him, 
a new sjjeaking on his part to man. The miracle shall be 
credentials for the bearer of that good word, signs that 
he has a special mission for the realization of the pur¬ 
poses of God in regard of humanity.^ When the truth 
has found a receptive heart, has awoke deep echoes in the 
innermost soul of man, he who brings it may thus show 
that he stands yet nearer to God than others, that he is 
to be heard not merely as one that is true, but as himself 
the Truth (see Matt. xi. 4, 5; John v. 36) ; or at least, 
as a messenger standing in direct connexion with Him 
who is the Truth (i Hin. xiii. 3); claiming unreserved 

^ Gregory tlie Great {Horn. iv. in Evangi) : Unde et adjimcta sunt 
praedicatiouibus sanctis miracula; ut fidem verbis daret virtus ostensa, 
st nova facerent, qui nova prcsdicarent. 


28 


THE AUTHORITY OF 


submission, and tbe reception, upon bis autboritj, of other 
statements -which transcend the mind of man,— mysteries, 
which though, of course, not against that measure and 
standard of truth which God has given unto every man, 
yet cannot be weighed or measured by it. 

To demand such a sign from one who comes professing 
to be the utterer of a new revelation, the bringer of a 
direct message from God, to demand this, even when the 
word already commends itself as good, is no mark of 
unbelief, but on the contrary is a duty upon his part to 
whom the message is brought. Else might he lightly be 
persuaded to receive that as from God, which, indeed, was 
only the word of man. Credulity is as real, if not so 
great, a sin as unbelief. It was no impiety on the part of 
Pharaoh to say to Moses and Aaron, ‘ Show a miracle for 
you’ (Exod. vii. 9, 10); on the contrary, it was altogether 
right for him to require this. They came, averring they 
had a message for him from God : it was his duty to put 
them to the proof. His sin began, when he refused to 
believe their credentials. On the other hand, it was a 
mark of unbelief in Ahaz (Isai. vii. 10-13), however he 
might disguise it, that he would not ask a sign from God 
in confirmation of the prophet’s word. Had that word been 
more precious to him, he would not have been satisfied 
till the seal was set to it; and that he did not care for the 
seal was a sure evidence that he did not truly care for the 
promise which should receive the seal. 

But the purpose of the miracle being, as we have seen, 
to confirm that which is good, so, upon the other hand, 
where the mind and conscience witness against the doc¬ 
trine, not all the miracles in the world have a right to 
demand submission to the word which they seal.‘ On the 
contrary, the great act of faith is to believe, against, and 

'As Gregory tlie Great says well, The Church does not so much dmy, 
as despise the miracles of heretics (JMoral. xx. 7) : Sancta Ecclesia, etiam 
SI qua hunt hsereticorum miracula, despicit j quia hsec sanctitatis speci¬ 
men non esse cognoscit. 


'MIRACLES. 


29 


in despite of, tliem all, in what God has revealed to, and 
implanted in, the soul, of the holy and the true; not to 
believe another Gospel, though an Angel from heaven, or 
one transformed into such, should bring it (Deut. xiii. 3 ; 
Gal. i. 8); ^ and instead of compelling assent, miracles 
are then rather warnings to us that we keep aloof, for 
they tell us that not merely lies are here, for to that the 
conscience bore witness already, but that he who utters 
them is more than a common deceiver, is eminently ‘ a 
liar and an Antichrist,’ a false prophet,—standing in more 
immediate connexion than other deceived and evil men to 
the kingdom of darkness, so that Satan has given him his 
power (Rev. xiii. 2), is using him to be an especial organ of 
his, and to do a special work for him.^ 

But if these things are so, there might seem a twofold 
danger to which the simple and unlearned Christian would 
be exposed—the danger, first, of not receiving that which 
indeed comes from God, or secondly, of receiving that which 
comes from an evil source. But indeed these dangers do 
not beset the unlearned and the simple more than they 

^ Augustine (J)e Civ. Dei, x. 16): Si tantum lii [angeli] miralDilibus 
factis human as permoverent mentes, qui sacrificia sibi expetunt: illi 
autem qui hoc prohibent, et uni tantum Deo sacrificari jubent, nequaquam 
ista xisibilia miracula facere dignarentur, profecto non sensu corporis, 
sed ratione mentis prseponenda eorum esset auctoritas. So to the Mani- 
chjeans he says {Con. Faust, xiii. 5) : Miracula non facitis; quse sifaceretis, 
etiam ipsa in vobis caveremus, prsestruente nos Domino, et dicente, Ex- 
surgent multi pseudo-christi et pseudo-prophetae, et facient signa et 
prodigia multa. Theodoret too comments on Deut. xiii. 3 thus : SiSaaKo- 
f.ie6a nr) Trpoatx^t'^ aviinoiQ, otciv 6 ravra dpwv ivavria ry ev(Te(3el^ SiSacTKet. 

* Thus Irenaeus {Adv. Ilcer. Ii. xxxi. 3) calls such deceitful workers 
^precursors of the great Dragon,’ quos similiter atque ilium devitare 
oportet, et quanto majore phantasrnate operari dicuntur, tanto magis 
observare eos, quasi majorem nequitiae spiritum perceperint. And Ter- 
tullian, refuting Gnostics, who argued that there was no need that Christ 
should have been prophesied of beforehand, since He could at once prove 
his mission by his miracles [per documenta virtutum], replies {Adv. Marc. 
iii. 3) : At ego negabo solam hanc illi speciem ad testimonium competisse, 
quam et Ipse postmodum exauctoravit. Siquidem edicens multos ventures, 
et signa facturos, et virtutes magnas edituros, aversiouem [eversionem ?j 
etiam electorum ,• nec ideo tamen admittendos, temerariam signorum et 
virtutum fidem ostendit, ut etiam apiid pseudo-christos facillimanira. 


THE AUTHORITY OF 


30 

beset and are part of tlie trial and temptation of every 
man; tbe safeguard from either of these fatal errors lying 
altogether in men’s moral and spiritual, and not at all in 
their intellectual, condition. They only find the witness 
which the truth bears to itself to be no witness, they only 
believe the lying wonders, in whom the moral sense is 
already perverted; they have not before received the love 
of the truth, that they might be saved from believing a lie. 
Thus, then, their believing this lie and rejecting that truth 
is, in fact, but the final judgment upon them that have 
had pleasure in unrighteousness. With this view exactly 
agree the memorable words of St. Paul (2 Thess. ii. 9-12), 
wherein he declares that it is the anterior state of every 
man which shall decide whether he shall receive the lying 
wonders of Antichrist or reject them (cf. John v. 43).* 
For while these come ^with all deceivableness of un¬ 
righteousness’ to them whose previous condition has 
fitted them to embrace them, who have been ripening 
themselves for this extreme judgment, there is ever some¬ 
thing in these wonders, something false, or immoral, or 
ostentatious, or something merely idle, which detects and 
lays them bare to a simple faith, and for that at once 
broadly differences them from those which belong to the 
kingdom of the truth.^ 

These differences have been often brought out. Such 
miracles are immoral; ^ or if not immoral, they are idle, 

^ Augustine {De Civ. Dei, xx. 19) : Seducentur eis signis atque pro- 
digiis qui seduci merebuntur. Proinde judicati seducentur, et seducti 
judicabuntur. 

* ‘ You complain/ says Dr. Arnold, in a letter to Dr. Hawkins {Life, 
Tol. ii. p. 226), ‘of those persons who judge of a revelation not by its 
evidence, but by its substance. It has always seemed to me that its sub¬ 
stance is a most essential part of its evidence; and that miracles wrought 
in favour of what was foolish or wicked, would only prove Manicheism. 
We are so perfectly ignorant of the unseen world, that the character of 
any supernatural power can only be judged by the moral character of the 
statements which it sanctions. Thus only can we tell whether it be a 
revelation from God or from the Devil.’ 

* Thus Arnobius {Ado. Gen. i. 43} of the heathen wonder-workers* 


MIRACLES. 


3 * 


leading to and ending in nothing. For as the miracle, 
standing in connexion with highest moral ends, must 
not be itself an immoral act, as little may it be an act 
merely futile, issuing in vanity and nothingness. This argu¬ 
ment Origen continually uses, when plied with the alleged 
miracles of heathen saints and sages. He counts, and 
rightly, that he has abundantly convinced them of false¬ 
hood, when he has asked, and obtained no answer to, this 
question, ‘ What came of these ? In what did they 
issue ? Where is the society which has been founded by 
their help ? What is there in the world’s history which 
they have helped forward, to show that they lay deep in 
the mind and counsel of God? The miracles of Moses 
issued in a Jewish polity; those of Jesus Christ in ? 
Christian Church; whole nations were knit togeth'e 
through their help.^ What have your boasted Apollo’-ss, 
or Esculapius to show as the fruit of theirs ? What trac'^r 
have they left behind them ? ’ ^ And not merely, he goes 
on to say, were Christ’s miracles effectual, but effectual 
for good,—and such good was their distinct purpose and 
aim ; for this is the characteristic distinction between the 
dealer in false shows of power and the true worker of 
divine works, that the latter has ever the reformation of 
men in his eye, and seeks always to forward this; while 
the first, whose own work is built upon fraud and lies, can 
have no such purpose of destroying that very kingdom out 
of which he himself grows.^ 

Quis enim hos nesciat aut imminentia studere prsenoscere, quse necessario 
(velint nolint) suis ordinationibus veniunt ? aut mortiferam immittere 
quibus libuerit tabem, aut familiarium dirumpere caritates: aut sine 
clavibus reserare, quse clausa sunt; aut ora silentio vincire, aut in curri- 
culis equos debilitare, incitare, tardare; aut uxoribus et liberis alienis 
(siye illi mares sint, sive feminei generis) inconcessi amoris flammas et 
furiales immittere cupiditates? Cf. Irenaeus, Adv. Jlcer. ir. 31. 2, 3. 

^ Con. Cels. ii. 51 ; oXmv GvardvTOJv ixtTa rd arffxda avToii/. 

* Ibid. i. 67 ; AeiKvvrujffav r][j.lv"R\Xr]Vfg tQv KartiXtyix'ivuiv rivoq ^LOXpiXtc^ 
XafjtTrpbVf Kill irapaTtlvav £7rt rag varepov ysvedgj Kal rrjXiKovrov tpyor, b)g 
hiTcotdv TTi^voTTjra T(p TTipi avTwv pvdip^XkyovTi dirb Oeiag avTobg yeyovsi'ui 
VTTopag. \ 

* Cm. Ct^. 1. 68 ; cf. Eusebius, Dem. Evan<j. iii. 6. 



32 


THE AUTHORITY OF 


These, too, are marks of the true miracle, and marks very 
nearly connected with the foregoing, that it is never a 
mere freak of power, done as in wantonness, with no need 
compelling, for show and ostentation.' With good right 
in that remarkable religious romance of earliest Christian 
times. The Recognitions of Clementf and in the cognate 
Clementine Homilies,^ Peter draws a contrast between the 
wonderful works of Christ and those alleged by the follow¬ 
ers of Simon Magus to have been wrought by their master. 
What profit, he asks, what significance was there in 
Simon’s speaking statues, his dogs of brass or stone that 
barked, his flights through the air, his transformations of 
himself now into a serpent, now into a goat, his putting 
of two faces, his rolling himself unhurt upon burning 
wofbls, and the like ?—which even if he had done, the works 
For "'Ossed no meaning; they stood in relation to nothing; 
riney were not, what each true miracle is always more or 
less, redemptive acts ; in other words, works not merely of 
power but of grace, each one an index and a prophecy of 
the inner work of man’s deliverance, which it accompanies 
and helps forward.** But, as we should justly expect, it 
was preeminently thus with the miracles of Christ. Each 
of these is in small, and upon one side or another, a partial 
and transient realization of the great work, which He 
came that in the end He might accomplish perfectly and 
for ever. They are all pledges, in that they are themselves 
first-fruits of his power; in each of them the word of 

^ Gerson (De Distinct. Ver. Mirac.) : Miraculum, si pia utilitate aiit 
necessitate careat, eo facto suspectiim est. 

® iii. 6 (Cotelerii Patt. Apost. vol. i. p. 529). 

* Horn. ii. 32-44. (ibid. p. 629). 

* Hom.\\i. 60 (ibid. p. 529) : Nam die, (juseso, qum utilitas est ostendere 
statuas ambulantes ? latrare sereos aut lapideos canes.? salire montes ? 
volare per aerem ? et alia bis similia, quae dicitis fecisse Simonem ? Quse 
autem a Bono sunt, ad hominum salutem deferuntur ; ut sunt ilia quse 
fecit Dominus noster, qui fecit csecos videre, fecit surdos audire; debilea 

et claudos erexit, languores et daemones effugavit.Ista ergo sig-na 

quae ad salutem bominum prosunt, et aliquid boni bomiuibus conferunt, 
Malignus facere non potest. Cf. Iren£Eus, Con, Hair, ii, xxxfi, 3. 



MIUACLES, 


33 


salvation is incorporated in an act of salvation. Only wlien 
regarded in this light do they appear not merely as illus¬ 
trious examples of his might, but also as glorious manifes¬ 
tations of his holy love.' 

It is worth while to follow this a little in detail. What 
evils are they, which hinder man from reaching the true 
end and aim of his creation, and from which- he needs a 
redemption ? It may briefly be answered that they are sin 
in its moral and in its physical manifestations. If we 
regard its moral manifestations, in the darkness of the 
understanding, in the wild discords of the spiritual life, 
none were such fearful examples of its tyranny as the 
demoniacs; they were special objects, therefore, of the 
miraculous power of the Lord. Then if we ask ourselves 
what are the physical manifestations of sin; they are 
sicknesses of all kinds, fevers, palsies, leprosies, blindness, 
each of these death beginning, a partial death—and finally, 
the death absolute of the body. This region therefore is 
fitly another, as it is the widest region, of his redemptive 
grace. In the conquering and removing of these evils. He 
eminently bodied forth the idea of Himself as the Re¬ 
deemer of men. But besides these, sin has its manifesta¬ 
tions more purely physical; it reveals itself and its conse¬ 
quences in the tumults and strife of the elements among 
themselves, as in the rebellion of nature against man; for 
the destinies of the natural world were linked to the des¬ 
tinies of man; and when he fell, he drew after him his 
whole inheritance, which became subject to the same 

^ No one wilb I think, deny to the historian Niehuhr the possession in 
a very high degree of that critical faculty, which judges of the credibility, 
or the contrary, of events presented as true, and this is his remarkable 
testimony on this matter (^Lebensnachrichten, vol. i. p. 470)’ nun 

Wunder im strengsten Sinne betrifft, so bedarf es wahrhaftig nur einer 
nnbefangenen und scharfblickenden Naturforschung damit wir einsehen, 
dass die erzahlten der christlichen Geschichte nichts weniger als wider- 
sinnigsind, und einer Vergleichungmit Legendenmarchen oder den angeb- 
lichen anderer Religionen um wahrzunehmen, welch ein anderer Geiat 
in ihnen lebt. 


34 


THE AUTHORITY OF 


vanity as liimself. Therefore do we behold Him, in whom 
the lost prerogatives of the race were recovered, walking 
on the stormy waves, or qnelling the menace of the sea 
with his word; incorporating in these acts the deliverance 
of man from the rebellions powers of nature, which had 
risen up against him, and instead of his willing servants, 
were oftentimes now his tyrants and his destroyers. These 
also were redemptive acts. Even the two or three of his 
works which do not range themselves so readily under any 
of these heads, yet are not indeed exceptions. Take, for 
example, the multiplying of the bread. The original curse 
of sin was the curse of barrenness,—the earth yielding 
hard-won and scanty returns to the sweat and labour of 
man; but here this curse is removed, and in its stead the 
primeval abundance for a moment re-appears. All scant¬ 
ness and scarceness, such as this lack of bread in the 
wilderness, that failing of the wine at the marriage-feast, 
were not man’s portion at the first; for all the earth was 
appointed to serve him, and to pour the fulness of its treasure 
into his lap. That he ever should hunger or thirst, that 
he should ever have lack of anything, was a consequence 
of Adam’s sin,—fitly, therefore, removed by Him, the 
second Adam, who came to restore to him all which had 
been forfeited by the first. 

The miracle, then, being this ethical act, and only to 
be received when it is so, and when it seals doctrines of 
holiness, the forgetting or failing to bring forward that 
the divine miracle must, of necessity, move in this sphere 
of redemption only, that the doctrine also is to try the 
miracle, as well as the miracle to seal the doctrine, is a 
dangerous omission on the part of some who, in modern 
times, have written ^ Evidences of Christianity,^ and have 
found in the, miracles wrought by its Eounder, and in 
these mainly as acts of power, well-nigh the exclusive 
argument for its reception as a divine revelation. On the 
place which these works should take in the array of proofs 


MIRACLES. 


35 


for the things which we believe, there will be occasion, bj 
and bj, to speak. IPor the present it may be sufficient to 
observe, that if men are taught to believe in Christ upon 
no other grounds than because He attested his claims by 
works of wonder, and that they are therefore bound to do 
50 , how shall they consistently refuse belief to any other, 
who may come hereafter attesting his claims by the same ? 
We have here a paving of the way of Antichrist; for as 
we know that he will have his ^ signs and wonders ’ 
(2 Thess. ii. 9), so, if this argument is good, he will have 
right on the score of these to claim the faith and allegi¬ 
ance of men. But no; the miracle must witness for itself, 
and the doctrine must witness for itself, and then, and 
then only, the first is capable of witnessing for the 
second; ^ and those books of Christian Evidences are 
maimed and imperfect, fraught with the most perilous 
consequences, which reverence in the miracle little else 
but its power, and see in that alone what gives either to 
it its attesting worth, or to the doctrine its authority as 
adequately attested truth. 

* Gerhard (Loc. Theoll. loc. xxiii. ii); Miracula sunt doctrinse tesserae 


ac sigilla; qiiemadi 
ita quoque miracula 



a iiteris avulsum nihil probat, 


CHAPTEE IV. 


THE EVANGELICAL, COMPARED WITH OTHER 
CYCLES OF MIRACLES. 

I. The Miracles op the Old Testament. 

T he miracles of our Lord and tliose of tlie Old Testa 
ment afford many interesting points of comparison, 
a comparison equally instructive, whether we trace the 
points of likeness, or of unlikeness, which exist between 
them. Thus, to note first a remarkable difference, we 
find oftentimes the holy men of the older Covenant 
bringing, if one may venture so to speak, hardly, and 
with difficulty, the wonder-work to pass; it is not bom 
without pangs ; there is sometimes a momentary pause, a 
seeming uncertainty about the issue; while the miracles 
of Christ are always accomplished with the highest ease ; 
He speaks, and it is done. Thus Moses must plead and 
struggle with God, ‘Heal her now, O God, I beseech 
Thee,’ before the plague of leprosy is removed from his 
sister, and not even so can he instantly win the boon 
(Hum. xii. 13-15); but Christ heals a leper by his touch 
(Matt. viii. 3) or ten with even less than this, merely by 
the power of his will and at a distance ^ (Luke xvii. 14). 
Elijah must pray long, and his servant go up seven times, 
before tokens of the rain appear (i Kin. xviii. 42-44); he 
stretches himself thrice on the child and cries unto the 

^ Cyril of Alexandria (Cramer’s Cat. in Luc. v. 12) has observed and 
drawn out the contrast. 


THE EVANGELICAL MIRACLES. 


37 


Lord, and painfully wins back its life (i Kin. xvii. 2i, 
22); and Elisha, with yet mOre of eJffort and only after 
partial failure (2 Kin. iv. 31-35), restores the child of the 
Shunammite to life. Christ, on the other hand, shows 
Himself the Lord of the living and the dead, raising the 
dead with as much ease as He performs the commonest 
transactions of life.—In the miracles wrought by men, 
glorious acts of faith as they are, for they are ever 
wrought in reliance on the strength and faithfulness of 
God, who will follow up and seal his servant’s word, it is 
yet possible for human impatience and human unbelief to 
break out. Thus Moses, God’s instrument though he be 
for the work of power, speaks hastily and acts unbeliev- 
ingly (ISTum. xx. ii). It is needless' to say of the Son, 
that his confidence ever remains the same, that his 
Father hears Him always; no admixture of the slightest 
human infirmity mars the completeness of his work. 

Where the miracles are similar in kind, Christ’s are 
larger, freer, and more glorious. Elisha, indeed, feeds a 
hundred men with twenty loaves (2 Kin. iv. 42-44), but 
He five thousand with five.^ Others have their instru¬ 
ment of power to which the wonder-working energy is 
linked. Thus Moses has his rod, his staff of wonder, to 
divide the Eed Sea, and to accomplish his other mighty 
acts; without which he is nothing (Exod. vii. 19; viii. 5, 
16; ix. 23; X. 13; xiv. 16, &c.); his tree to heal the 
bitter waters (Exod. xv. 25); Elijah divides the river with 
his mantle (2 Kin. ii. 8); Elisha heals the spring with a 
cruse of salt (2 Kin. ii. 20). But Christ accomplishes his 
miracles simply by the agency of his word (Matt. xii. 13), 
or by a touch (Matt. viii. 3; xx. 34); or if He takes any 
material substance as the conductor of his healing power, 

1 Tertullian {Adv. Marc. iv. 35): Aliter Dominus per semet ipsum 
operatur, sive per Filium; aliter per prophetas famiilos sues; maxime 
documenta virtutis et potestatis j quae ut clariora et validiora, qua pro¬ 
pria, distare a vicariis fas est. 


THE EVANGELICAL, COMPARED 


38 

it is from Himself He takes it (Mark vii. 33; viii. 23) or 
should He, as once He does, use any foreign medium in 
part (John ix. 6), yet by other miracles of like kind, in 
which He has recourse to no such extraneous helps, He 
declares plainly that this was of free choice, and not of 
necessity. And which is but another side of the same 
truth, while the miracles of Moses, or of the Apostles, are 
ever done in the name of, and with the attribution of the 
glory to, another, ^ Stand still and see the salvation of the 
Lord, which He will show you’ (Exod. xiv. 13), ‘In the 
name of Jesus Christ of Hazareth rise up and walk ’ (Acts 
iii. 6), ‘ Eneas, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole ’ (Acts ix. 
34; cf. Mark xvi. 17; Luke x. 17 ; John xiv. 10); his are 
ever wrought in his own name and by a power immanent 
and inherent in Himself: ‘ I will, be thou clean ’ (Matt, 
viii. 3); ‘ Thou deaf and dumb spirit, I charge thee come 
out of him’ (Mark ix. 25); ‘Toung man, I say unto thee. 
Arise ’ (Luke vii. 14).^ Where He prays, being about to 
perform one of his mighty works, his disciples shall learn 
even from his prayer itself that herein He is not asking 
for a power not indwelling in Him, but indeed only testi¬ 
fying thus to the unbroken oneness of his life with his 
Father’s (John xi. 41, 42) just as on another occasion 
He will not suffer his disciples to suppose that it is for 
other than their sakes that the testimony from heaven is 
borne unto Him (John xii. 30). Thus needful was it for 

^ In tlie East the Mahometans had probably a sense of this fitness that 
Christ should find all in Himself, when they made his healing virtue to 
have resided in his breath (Tholuck, Bluthensamml. aus d. Morgenl. Myst. 
p. 62); to which also they were led as being the purest and least material 
effluence of the body (cf. John xx. 22). So Abgarus, in the apocrj^phal 
letter which bears his name, magnifies Christ’s healings, in that they were 
done dvsv (papfiaKwv Kai [3oravu)v, Arnobius too (Adv. Gent. i. 44, 48^ 
52) lays great stress upon the point, that all which He did was done sine 
ullis adminiculis rerum; he is comparing, it is true, our Lord’s miracles 
with the lying wonders of the y 6 r]Tec, not with the only relatively inferior 
of the Old Testament. 

* See Pearson, On the Creed, Art. 2; Gerhard, Loo. Theoll. loc. iv. 5, 59, 

* Cf. Ambrose, De Fide, iii. 4, 


WITH OTHER CYCLES OF MIRACLES. 39 


them, thus needful for all, that they should have high and 
exclusive thoughts of Him, and should not class Him v^^ith 
any other, even the greatest and holiest of the children 
of men. 

These likenesses, and these unlikenesses no less, are 
such as beforehand we should naturally expect. We 
should expect the mighty works of either Covenant to he 
like, since the old and new form parts of one organic 
whole; and it is ever God’s law, alike in the kingdoms 
of nature and of grace, that the lower should contain the 
germs and prophetic intimations of the higher. We 
should expect them to be unlike, since the very idea of 
God’s kingdom is that of progress, of a gradually fuller 
communication and larger revelation of Himself to men, 
so that He who in times past spake unto the fathers by 
the prophets, did at length speak unto us by his Son; 
and it was only meet that this Son should be clothed 
with mightier powers than theirs, and powers which He 
held not from another, but such as were evidently his own 
in fee.' 

This, too, explains a difference in the character of the 
miracles of the two Covenants, and how it comes to pass 
that those of the Old wear oftentimes a far severer aspect 
than those of the Hew. They are miracles, indeed, of 
God’s grace, but yet also miracles of the Law, of that 
Law which worketh wrath, which will teach, at all costs, 
the lesson of the awful holiness of God, his hatred of the 
sinner’s sin,—a lesson which men needed thoroughly to 
learn, lest they should mistake and abuse the new lesson 
which a Saviour taught, of God’s love at the same time 
toward the sinner himself. Miracles of the Law, they 

^ Tertullian {Adv. Marc. iii. passim) urges tHis well. Eusetiug {Dem. 
Evang. iii. 2) traces in the same way the parallelisms between the life of 
Moses and of Christ. They supposed that in so doing they were, if any¬ 
thing, confirming the truth of each, though now the assailants of Reve¬ 
lation will have it that these coincidences are only calculated to cast 
suspicion upon both. 


4-0 


THE EVANGELICAL, COMPARED 


preserve a character that accords with the Law; being 
oftentimes fearful outbreaks of God’s anger against the 
unrighteousness of men; such for instance are the signs 
and wonders in Egypt, many of those in the desert (hTum. 
xvi. 31; Lev. X. 2), and some which the later prophets 
wrought (2 Kin. i. 10-12; ii. 23-25); leprosies are in¬ 
flicted (Kum. xii. 10; 2 Chr. xxvi. 19), not removed; a 
sound hand is withered and dried up (i Kin. xiii. 4), not 
a withered hand restored. Kot but that these works also 
are for the most part what our Lord’s are altogether and 
with no single exception, namely, works of evident grace 
and mercy. I affirm this of all our Lord’s miracles; for 
that single one, which seems an exception, the cursing of 
the barren fig-tree, has no right really to be considered 
such. Indeed it is difficult to see how our blessed Lord 
could more strikingly have shown his purpose of preserv¬ 
ing throughout for his miracles their character of bene¬ 
ficence, or have witnessed for Himself that He was come 
not to destroy men’s lives but to save them, than in this 
circumstance,—that when He needed in this very love to 
declare, not in word only but in act, what would be the 
consequences of an obstinate unfruitfulness and resistance 
to his grace, and thus to make manifest the severer side 
of his ministry. He should have chosen for the showing 
out of -this, not one among all the sinners who were about 
Him, but displayed his power upon a tree, which, itself 
incapable of feeling, might yet effectually serve as a 
sign and warning to men. He will- allow no single 
exception to the rule of grace and love.^ When He 

' Lord Bacon (Meditationes Sacrce) on tlie words, Bene omnia fecit 
(Mark vii. 37 ), in which he sees rightly an allusion to Gen. i. 31, goes 
on to say: Verus plausus: Deus cum universa crearet, vidit quod sino-ula 
et omnia erant hona nimis. Deus, Verbum in miraculis quse edidit (omne 
autem miraculum est nova creatio, et non ex lege primae creationis) nil 
facere voluit, quod non gratiam et beneficentiam omnino spiraret. Moses 
edidit miracula, et profligavit -^gyptios pestibus multis: Elias edidit 
et occlusit cselum ne plueret super terram; et rursus eduxit de caelo 
ignem Dei super duces et cohortes; Elizaeus edidit, et evocavit ursas e 


WITH OTHER CYCLES OF MIRACLES. 41 


blesses, it is men; bnt wlien He smites, it is an unfeeling 
tree.* 

It is also noticeable tbat tbe region in which the miracles 
of the Old Testament chiefly move, is that of external 
nature; they are the dividing of the sea (Exod. xiv. 21), or 
of a river (Josh. iii. 14; 2 Kin. ii. 8, 14), yawnings of the 
earth (Hum. xvi. 31), fire falling down from heaven (i Kin. 
xviii. 38 ; 2 Kin. i. 10, 12), furnaces which have lost their 
power to consume (Dan. iii.), wild-beasts which have laid 
aside their inborn fierceness in whole (Dan. vi. 18, 22), or 
in part (i Kin. xiii. 24, 28), and the like. Hot of course 
that there are no other miracles but these in the Old 
Testament; but this nature is the haunt and main region 
of the miracle there, as in the Kew it is mainly the sphere 
of man’s life in which it moves. And consistently with 
this, the earlier miracles, done as the greater number of 
them were, in the presence of the giant powers of heathen¬ 
dom, have oftentimes a colossal character. Those powers 
of the world are strong, but the God of Israel will show 
Himself to be stronger than them all. Thus it is with 
the miracles of Egypt, the miracles of Babylon; they are 

deserto, qii£e.laniarent imputeresj Petrus Auaniam sacrilegum hypocri- 
tam morte, Paulus Elymam magum csecitate, percussit: sed nihil hujus- 
modi fecit Jesus. Descendit super eum Spiritus in forma columbse, de 
quo dixit, Nescitis cuj us Spiritus sitis. Spiritus Jesu, spiritus columhinus: 
fuerunt illi servu Dei tanquam boves Dei triturantes granum, et concul- 
cantes paleam; sed Jesus agnus Dei sine ira et judiciis. Omnia ejus 
miracula circa corpus humanum, et doctrina ejus circa animam humanam. 
Indiget corpus hominis alimento, defensione ab externis, et cura. Ille 
multitudinem piscium in retibus congregavit, ut uberiorem Tictum 
hominibus preeberet: ille alimentum aqum in dignius alimentum vini 
ad exbilarandum cor -hominis convertit: ille ficum quod officio suo 
ad quod destinatum fuit, ad cibum hominis videlicet, non fungeretur, 
arefieri jussit: ille penuriam panum et piscium ad alendum exerci- 
tum populi dilatavit: ille ventos, quod navigantibus minarentur, 

corripuit.Nullum miraculum judicii, omnia beneficentise, et 

circa corpus humanum. 

* From this point of view we should explain our Saviour s rebuke to 
the sons of Zebedee, when they wanted to call down fire from heaven on 
a village of the Samaritans, ‘ as Elias did' (Luke ix. 54) ; to repeat, that 
is, an Old-Testament miracle. 


42 


THE EVANGELICAL, COMPARED 


miracles eminently of strength ; ^ for under the influence of 
the great nature-worsliips of those lands, all religion had 
assumed a colossal grandeur in its outward manifestations. 
Compared with our Lord’s works, wrought in the days of 
his flesh, those were the whirlwind and the fire, and his as 
the still small voice which followed. In that old time God 
was teaching his people. He was teaching also the nations 
with whom his people were brought wonderfully into con¬ 
tact, that He who had entered into covenant with one 
among all the nations, was not one God among many, the 
God of the hills, or the God of the plains (i Kin. xx. 23), 
but that the God of Israel was the Lord of the whole 
earth, who wielded all its elements at his will. 

But Israel at the time of the Incarnation had thoroughly 
learned that lesson, much else as it had stiU to learn: 
and the whole civilized world had practically outgrown 
polytheism, however as the popular superstition it may 
have lingered still. And thus the works of our Lord, 
though they bear not on their front the imposing charac¬ 
ter which did those of old, yet contain higher and deeper 
truths. They are eminently miracles of the Incarnation, 
of the Son of God who had taken our flesh, and who, 
having taken, would heal it. They have predominantly a 
relation to man’s body and his spirit. Miracles of nature 
assume now altogether a subordinate place: they still 
survive, even as we could ill afibrd wholly to have lost 
them; for this region of nature must still be claim ed as 
part of Christ’s dominion, though not its chiefest or its 

1 We find the false Christs, who were so plentiful about the time of 
our Lord’s coming, professing and promising to do exactly the same 
works as those wrought of yore,—to repeat even on a larger scale these 
Old-Testament miracles. Thus ^ that Egyptian ’ whom the Koman tri - 
bune supposed that he saw in Paul (Acts xxi. 38), and of whom Josephus 
givea us a fuller account (Antt. xx. 8, 6), led a tumultuous crowd to the 
Mount of Olives, promising to show them from thence how, as a second 
and a greater Joshua, he would cause the walls, not of Jericho, but of 
Jerusalem, to fall to the ground at his bidding. See Vitringa, Be Signia 
fi Messid edendis in his Oh&s. Sac. vol. i. p. 482. 


WITH OTHER CYCLES OF MIRACLES. 43 


noblest province. But man, and not nature, is now tbe 
main subject of these mighty powers; and thus it comes 
to pass that, with less of outward pomp, less to startle 
and amaze, the new have a far deeper inward significance 
than the old.' . 

2. The Mieacles op the Apooetphal Gospels. 

The apocryphal gospels, abject productions as, whether 
contemplated in a literary or moral point of view, they 
must be allowed to be, are yet instructive in this respect, 
that they show us what manner of gospels were the re¬ 
sult, when men drew from their own fancy, and devised 
Christs of their own, instead of resting upon the basis of 
historic truth, and delivering to the world faithful records 
of Him who indeed had lived and died among them. Here, 
as ever, the glory of the true comes out into strongest 
light by its comparison with the false. But in nothing, 
perhaps, are these apocryphal gospels more worthy of 
note, than in the difference between the main features of 
their miracles and of those of the canonical Gospels. 
Thus in the canonical, the miracle is indeed essential, but, 
at the same time, ever subordinated to the doctrine which 
it confirms,—a link in the great chain of God’s manifesta¬ 
tion of Himself to men; its ethical significance never falls 
into the background, but the wonder-work of grace and 
power has, in every case where this can find room, nearer 
or remoter reference to the moral condition of the person 
or persons in whose behalf it is wrought. The miracles 
ever lead us off from themselves to their Author; they 
appear as emanations from the glory of the Son of God; 
but it is in Him we rest, and not in them 5 they are but 

1 Julian tbe Apostate had indeed so little an eye for the glory of suck 
works as these, that in one place he says (Cyril, Adv. Jul. Yi.)j Jesus did 
nothing wonderful, ^ unless any should esteem that to have healed some 
lame and blind, and exorcised some demoniacs in villages like Bethsaida 
and Bethany, were very wonderful works.’ 

3 


44 


THE EVANGELICAL, COMPARED 


tlie halo round Him, and derive their worth from Him, 
not contrariwise He from them. They are held, too, to¬ 
gether by his strong and central personality, which does 
not leave them a conglomerate of marvellous anecdotes 
accidentally heaped together, but parts of a vast organic 
whole, of which every part is in vital coherence with all 
other. But it is altogether otherwise in these apocryphal 
narratives. To say that the miracles occupy in them the 
foremost place would very inadequately express the facts 
of the case. They are everything. Some of these so- 
called histories are nothing else but a string of these; 
which yet (aud this too is singularly characteristic) stand 
wholly disconnected from the ministry of Christ. Hot one 
of them belongs to the period after his Baptism, but they 
are all miracles of the Infancy,—in other words, of that 
time whereof the canonical history relates no miracle, and 
not merely does not relate any, but is at pains to tell us 
that during it no miracle was wrought, the miracle in 
Cana of Galilee being his first (John ii. ii). 

It follows of necessity that they are never seals of a 
word and doctrine which has gone before; they are never 
‘ signs,’ but at the best wonders and portents. Every 
higher purpose and aim is absent from them altogether. 
It is never felt that the writer is writing out of any higher 
motive than to excite and feed a childish love of the mar¬ 
vellous, never that he could say, ‘ These are written that 
ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, 
and that believing ye might have life through his name ’ 
(John XX. 31). Indeed, so far from having a religious, they 
are often wanting in an ethical element.^ The Lord Jesus 
appears in them as a wayward, capricious, passionate 
child; to be feared indeed, seeing that He is furnished 
with such formidable powers of avenging every wrong or 
accidental injury which He meets, every offence which He 

^ See on this matter Nicolas, Etude sur les Evangiles Apocryphes, Paris, 
1865. 


WITH OTHER CYCLES OF MIRACLES, 45 


may take; and so bearing Himself, tbat tbe request wbicb 
the parents of some other children are represented as 
making, that He may be kept within the house, for He 
brings harm and mischief wherever He comes, is perfectly 
justified by the facts. 

It may be well to cite a few examples in proof, however 
harshly some of them may jar on the Christian ear. Thus 
some children refuse to play with Him, hiding themselves 
from Him; He pursues and turns them into kids.^ An¬ 
other child by accident runs against Him, and throws Him 
down; whereupon He, being exasperated,® exclaims, ‘As 
thou hast made Me to fall, so shalfc thou fall and not rise;’ 
at the , same hour the child fell down and expired.* He 
has a dispute with the master who is teaching Him letters, 
concerning the order in which He shall go through the 
Hebrew alphabet, and his master strikes Him ; whereupon 
Jesus curses him, and straightway his arm is withered, he 
falls on his face and dies."* This goes on, till at length 
Joseph says to Mary, ‘Henceforward let us keep Him within 
doors, for whosoever sets himself against Him perishes.’ 
His passionate readiness to avenge Himself shows itself 
at the very earliest age. At five years old He has made a 
pool of water, and is moulding sparrows from the clay. 
Another child, the son of a scribe, displeased that He 
should do this on the Sabbath, opens the sluices of his 
pool and lets out the water. On this Jesus is indignant, 
gives him many injurious names, and causes him to wither 
and wholly dry up with his curse.® Such is the image 

^ Evang. Infant. 40, in Thilo’s Codex Apocryphus, p. 115 ; to whose ex¬ 
cellent edition of the apocryphal gospels the references in this section 
are made throughout. 

* IliKpavdeic, 

® Evang. Infant. 47, p. 123 ; cf. Evang. Thom. 4, p. 284. 

^ Evang. Infant. 49, p. 125. In the Evang. Thom. 14, p. 307, he only 
falls into a swoon, and something afterwards pleasing Jesus (15), ho 
raises him up again. 

5 Evany. Thom. 3, p. 282. This appears with variations in the Evang, 
Infant. 46, p. 122. 


THE EVANGELICAL, COMPARED 


which the authors of these books give us of the holy 
child Jesus;—and yet we need not wonder; for man is 
not only unable to realize the perfect, he is unable to con¬ 
ceive it. The idea is as much a gift, as the power to 
realize that idea. Even the miracles which are not of 
this revolting character are childish tricks, like the tricks 
of a conjuror, never solemn acts of power and love. Jesus 
enters the shop of a dyer, who has received various cloths 
from various persons to be dyed of divers colours. In the 
absence of the master. He throws them all into the dyeing 
vat together, and when the dyer returns and remonstrates, 
draws them out of the vat, each dyed according to the 
colour which was enjoined.^ He and some other children 
make birds and animals of clay; while each is boasting 
the superiority of his work, Jesus says, ^ I will cause 
those which I have made to go; ’—which they do, the 
animals leaping and the birds flying, and at his bidding 
returning, and eating and drinking from his hand.^ 
While yet an infant at his mother’s breast. He bids a 
palm-tree to stoop that she may pluck the dates; it obeys, 
and only returns to its position at his command.® His 
mother sends Him to the well for water; the pitcher 
breaks, and He brings the water in his cloak.** And as 
the miracles which He does, so those that are done in 
regard of Him, are idle or monstrous; the ox and the ass 
worshipping him, a new-born infant in the crib, may serve 
for an example.^ 

In all these, as will be observed, the idea of redem^ptive 
acts is wanting altogether; they are none of them the 
outward clothing of the inward facts of man’s redemption. 
Of course it is not meant to be affirmed that miracles of 
healing and of grace are altogether absent from these 
books ; ® that would evidently have been incompatible with 

^ Evang. Infant. 37, p. iii. 

" 36. 3 4 p. 121. 

® Ibid. p. 382. 

Foi instancG, Simon tlio CanaanitG (ibid. p. 117) is bGaled, wbile yet 
a child^ of the bite of a serpent. Yet even in miracles such as this there 


WITH OTHER CYCLES OF MIRACLES. 47 

any idea of a Redeemer; but only tbat they do not present 
to ns any clear and consistent image of a Saviour full of 
grace and power, but an image ratlier, continually dis¬ 
torted and defaced by lines of passion and caprice, of 
peevishness and anger. The most striking, perhaps, of 
the miracles related in regard of the child Jesus, is that 
of the falling down of the idols of Egypt at his presence 
in the land; for it has in it something of a deeper signifi¬ 
cance, as a symbol and prophecy of the overthrow of the 
idol worship of the world b}^ Him who was now coming 
into the world. ^ Again, the lions and the leopards gather¬ 
ing harmlessly round Him as He passed through the desert 
on the way to Egypt, is not alien to the true spirit of the 
Gospel, and has its analogy in the words of St. Mark, that 
He ‘ was with the wild-beasts ’ (i. 13) ; words not intro¬ 
duced merely to enhance the savageness of the wilderness 
where He spent those forty days of temptation, but a hint 
to us that in Him, the new head of the race, the second 
Adam, the Paradisaical state was once more given back 
(Gen. i. 28). But with a very few such partial exceptions 
as these, the apocryphal gospels are a barren and dreary 
waste of wonders without object or aim; and only instruc¬ 
tive as making us strongly to feel, more strongly than but 
for these examples we might have felt, how needful are 
other factors besides power for the producing of a true 
miracle; that wisdom and love must be there also; that 
where men conceive of power as its chiefest element, they 
give us only a hateful mockery of the divine. Had a 
Christ, such as these gospels portray, actually lived upon 
the earth, he had been no more than a potent and wayward 
magician, from whom all men would have shrunk with a 
natural instinct of distrust and fear. 

is always something that will not let us forget that we are moving in 
unother world from that in which the sacred Evangelists plant us. 

* Evang. Infant. 10-12, pp. 75-77; cf. i Sam. v. 3, 4. 


48 


THE EVANGELICAL, COAIPAEED 


3. The Later, or Ecclesiastical, Miracles. 

It would plainly lead mncli too far from tlie subject ir 
hand to enter into any detailed examination of the 
authority with which the later, or, as they may be con¬ 
veniently termed, the ecclesiastical, miracles come to us 
the claims they have on our belief. Yet a few words mus! 
of necessity find place concerning the permanent miracul¬ 
ous gifts which have been challenged for the Church as hei 
rightful heritage, alike by some who have gloried in their 
presumed presence, and by others who have lamented 
their absence—^by those who have seen in their presence 
the evidences of her sanctity, or in their absence, of her 
degeneracy and fall. It is not my belief that she has this 
gift of working miracles, nor yet that she was intended to 
have, and only through her own unfaithfulness has lost, 
it; nor that her Lord has abridged her of aught that 
would have made her strong and glorious in not endowing 
her with powers such as these. With reasons enough for 
humbling herself, I cannot think that among those is to 
be reckoned her inability to perform these works that 
should transcend nature. So many in our own day have 
arrived at a directly opposite conclusion, that it will be 
needful shortly to justify the opinion here exprest. 

And first, as a strong presumption against the intended 
continuance of these powers in the Church, may be taken 
the analogies derived from the earlier history of God’s 
dealings with his people. We do not find the miracles 
sown broadcast over the whole Old-Testament history, 
but they all cluster round a very few eminent persons, and 
have reference to certain great epochs and crises of the 
kingdom of God. Abraham, the ^friend of God^ and 
‘father of the faithful,’—David, the theocratic king,— 
Daniel, the ‘ man greatly beloved,’ are alike entirely with¬ 
out them; that is, they do no miracles; such may be ac- 
somplished in their behalf, but they themselves accomplish 


WITH OTHER CYCLES OF MIRACLES. 49 

none. In fact tliere are but two great outbursts of 
tbese 5 the first, at tbe establishing of the kingdom under 
Moses and Joshua, when, as at once is evident, they could 
not have been wanting; the second in the time of Elijah 
and Elisha; that also a time of the utmost need, when, 
the Levitical priesthood being abolished, and the faithful 
only a scattered few among the ten tribes, it was a ques¬ 
tion whether the court-religion which the apostate kings 
of Israel had set up, should not quite overbear the true 
worship of Jehovah. Then, in that decisive epoch of the 
kingdom’s history, the two great prophets, they too in a 
subordinate sense the beginners of a new period, arose, 
equipped with powers which should witness that He whose 
servants they were, was the God of Israel, however Israel 
might refuse to acknowledge Him. There is in all this 
an entire absence of prodigality in the employment of 
miracles; they are ultimate resources, reserved for the 
great needs of God’s kingdom, not its daily incidents; 
they are not cheap off-hand expedients, which may always 
be appealed to, but come only into play when nothing else 
would have supplied their room. How unlike this modera¬ 
tion to the wasteful expenditure of miracles in the legends 
of the middle ages! There no perplexity can occur so 
trifling that a miracle will not be brought in to solve it; 
there almost no saint, certainly no distinguished one, is 
without his nimbus of miracles around his head; they are 
adorned with these in rivalry with one another, in rivalry 
with Christ Himself. That remarkable acknowledgment, 
‘John did no miracle’ (John x. 41), finds no parallel in 
the records of their lives. 

We must add to this the declarations of Scripture, which 
I have already treated at large, on the object of miracles, 
that they are for the confirming the word by signs follow¬ 
ing, for authenticating a message as being from heaven— 
that signs are for the unbelieving (i Cor. xiv. 22). What 
do they then in a Christendom ? It may indeed be 


50 THE EVANGELICAL, COMPARED 

answered, that in it are unbelievers still; yet not in the 
sense in which St. Paul uses the word, for he means not 
the positively unbelieving, not those that in heart and will 
are estranged from the truth, but the negatively, and that, 
because the truth has never yet sufficiently accredited 
itself to them; the dirtcrroL, not the aTrstOcLs, Signs are 
not for these last, the positively unbelieving, since, as we 
have seen, they will exercise no power over those who 
harden themselves against the truth;—such will resist or 
evade them as surely as they will resist or evade every 
other witness of God’s presence in the world;—but for the 
unbelieving who hitherto have been such by no fault of 
their own, for them to whom the truth is now coming for 
the first time. And if not even for them now,—as they 
exist, for instance, in a heathen land,—we may sufficiently 
account for this by the fact that the Church of Christ, 
with its immense and evident superiorities of all kinds 
over everything with which it is brought in contact, and 
some portions of which superiority every man must recog¬ 
nize, is itself now the great witness and proof of the truth 
which it delivers. The truth, therefore, has no longer 
need to vindicate itself by an appeal to something else; 
but the position which it has won in the very forefront of 
the world is itself its vindication now, and suffices to give 
it a first claim on every man’s attention. 

And then further, all that we might ourselves before¬ 
hand presume from the analogy of external things leads 
us to the same conclusions. We find all beginning to be 
wonderful—to be under laws different from, and higher 
than, those which regulate ulterior progress. Thus the 
powers evermore at work for the upholding the natural 
world would have been manifestly insufficient for its first 
creation; there were other which must have presided at 
its birth, but which now, having done their work, have 
fallen back, and left it to its ordinary development. The 
multitudinous races of animals which people the earth, 


WITH OTHER CYCLES OF MIRACLES. 


5 ' 


and of plants which clothe it, needed infinitely more for 
their fi.rst production than suffices for their present up¬ 
holding, It is only according to the analogies of that 
which thus everywhere surrounds us, to presume that it 
was even so with the beginnings of the spiritual creation 
—the Christian Church. It is unquestionably so with 
the beginnings of that new creation in any single heart. 
Then, in the regeneration, the strongest tendencies of the 
old nature are overborne; the impossible has become pos¬ 
sible, in some measure easy; by a mighty wonder-stroke 
of grace the polarity in the man is shifted; the flesh, 
that was the positive pole, has become the negative, and 
the spirit, which was before the negative, is henceforth the 
positive. Shall we count it strange, then, that the coming 
in of a new order, not into a single heart, but into the 
entire world—a new order bursting forcibly through the 
bonds and hindrances of the old, should have been won¬ 
derful ? It would have been inexplicable if it had been 
otherwise. The son of Joseph might have lived and died, 
and done no miracles : but the Yirgin-born, the Son of the 
Most Highest, Himself the middle point of all wonder,— 
for Hitti to have done none, herein, indeed, had been the 
greatest marvel of all. 

But this new order, having not only declared but consti¬ 
tuted itself, having asserted that it is not of any inevitable 
necessity bound by the heavy laws of the old, henceforth 
submits itself in outward things, and for the present time, 
to those laws. All its true glory, which is its inward, it 
retains; but these powers, which are not the gift—for 
Christ Himself is the gift—but the signs of the gift, it 
foregoes. ^Miracles,’ says Buller, ‘are the swaddling 
clothes of the infant Churches; ’ and, we may add, not 
the garments of the full grown. They were as the pro¬ 
clamation that the king was mounting his throne; who, 
however, is not proclaimed every day, but only at his 
accession; when he sits acknowledged on his throne, the 


5 ^ 


THE EVANGELICAL, COMPARED 


proclamation ceases. They were as tlie bright clouds 
which gather round, and announce the sun at his first 
appearing: his mid-day splendour, though as full, and 
indeed fuller, of light and heat, knows not those bright 
heralds and harbingers of his rising. Or they may be 
likened to the temporary framework on which the arch is 
rounded, a framework taken down so soon as that is com¬ 
pleted. That the Church has had these wonders,—that its 
first birth was, like that of its wondrous Founder, wonder¬ 
ful,—of this it preserves a record and attestation in the 
Scriptures of truth. The miracles recorded there live 
for the Church; they are as much present witnesses for 
Christ to us now as to them who actually saw them with 
their eyes. For they were done once, that they might be 
believed always ; that we, having in the Gospels the lively 
representation of our Lord portrayed for us, might as 
surely believe that He was the ruler of nature, the healer 
of the body, the Lord of life and of death, as though we 
had actually ourselves seen Him allay a storm, or heal a 
leper, or raise one dead. 

Moreover, a very large proportion of the later miracles 
presented to our belief bear inward marks of spuriousness. 
The miracles of Scripture,—and among these, not so much 
the miracles of the Old Covenant as the miracles of Christ 
and his Apostles, being the miracles of that highest and 
latest dispensation under which we live,—we have a right 
to consider as normal, in their chief features at least, for 
all future miracles, if such were to continue in the Church. 
The details, the local colouring, might be different, and 
there would be no need to be perplexed at such a difference 
appearing ^ yet the later must not, in their inner spirit, 
be totally unlike the earlier, or they will carry the sentence 
of condemnation on their front. They must not, for in¬ 
stance, lead us back under the bondage of the senses, 
while those other were ever framed to release from that 
bondage. They must not be aimless and objectless, fan- 


WITH OTHER CYCLES OF MIRACLES. 


53 


tastic freaks of power, while those had every one of them 
a meaning and distinct ethical aim,—were bridges by 
which Christ found access from men’s bodies to their souls, 
—manifestations of his glory, that men might be drawn to 
the glory itself. They must not be ludicrous and grotesque, 
saintly jests, while those were evermore reverent and 
solemn and awful. And lastly, they must not be seals and 
witnesses to aught which the conscience, enlightened by 
the Word and Spirit of God,—whereunto is the ultimate 
appeal, and which stands above the miracle, and not 
beneath it,—protests against as untrue {the innumerable 
Eomish miracles which attest transubstantiation), or as 
error largely mingling with the truth (the miracles which 
go to uphold the whole Eomish system), those other having 
set their seal only to the absolutely true. Miracles with 
these marks upon them we are bound by all which we 
hold most sacred, by all which the Word of God has 
taught us, to reject and to refuse. It is for the reader, 
tolerably acquainted with the Church-history of the Middle 
Ages, to judge how many of its miracles will, if these tests 
be acknowledged and applied, at once fall away, and, fail¬ 
ing to fulfil these primary conditions, will have no right 
even to be considered any further.* 

^ The results are curious, which sometimes are come to through the 
following up to their first sources the biographies of eminent Eomish 
saints. Tholuck has done this in regard of Ignatius Loyola and Francis 
Xavier; and to him (Verm. ScJmft. pp. 50-57) I am mainly indebted 
for the materials of the following note.—Few, perhaps, have been sur¬ 
rounded with such a halo of wonders as the two great pillars of the 
order of the Jesuits, Loyola and Xavier. Upwards of two hundred 
miracles of Loyola were laid before the Pope, when his canonization was 
in question,—miracles beside which those of our Lord shrink into insig¬ 
nificance. If Christ by his word and look rebuked and expelled demons, 
Ignatius did the same by a letter. If Christ walked once upon the sea, 
Ignatius many times in the air. If Christ, by his countenance shining as 
the sun and his glistenng garments, once amazed his disciples, Ignatius 
did it frequently, and, entering into dark charribers, could, by his presence, 
light them up as with candles. If sacred history records three persons 
whom Christ raised from the dead, the number which Xavier raised 
exceeds all count. In like manner the miracles of his great namesake of 


54 


THE EVANGELICAL, COMPARED 


Yery interesting is it to observe bow the men who in 
some sort fell in with the prevailing tendencies of their age 
(for, indeed, who escapes them?), yet did ever, in their 

Assisi rivalled, when they did not leave behind, those of Christ. The 
author of the Liber Conformitatum, writing of him less than a century 
after his death, brings out these conformities of the Master and the 
servant: Hie sicut Jesus aquam in vinum convertit, panes multiplicavit, 
et de navicula in medio fluctuum maris miraculose immota, per se a terra 
abducta, docuit turbas audientes in littore. Huic omnis creatura quasi 
ad nutum videbatur parere, ac si in ipso esset status innocentim restitu- 
tus. Et ut cetera taceam: caecos illuminavit; surdos, claudos, para- 
lyticos, omnium infirmitatum generibus laborantes curavit, leprosos 
rnundavit; dsemones etfugavit; captivos eripuit; naufragis succurrit, et 
quam plures mortuos suscitavit (Gieseler, Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte, 
vol. ii. part ii. p. 355). But to return to Ignatius, and the historic evi¬ 
dence of his miracles. Ribadeneira, from early youth his scholar and 
companion, published, fifteen years after his death, in 1572, a life of his 
departed master and friend; which book appeared again in 1587, aug¬ 
mented with much additional matter communicated by persons who, 
having lived in familiar intercourse with Ignatius, must have been well 
acquainted with all the facts of his life (gravissimi viri et Ignatio valde 
familiares). Notably enough, neither in the first, nor yet in the second 
so greatly enlarged edition, does the slightest trace of a miracle appear. 
So far from this, the biographer discusses at length the reasons why it 
did not please God that miracles should be wrought by this eminent 
servant of his: Sed dicat aliquis, si base vera sunt, ut profecto sunt, 
quid causae est, quam ob reni illius sanctitas minus est testata miraculis, 
et, ut multorum Sanctorum vita, signis declarata, Virtutumque opera- 
tionibus insignita ? Cui ego; Quis cognovit sensum Domini, aut quis 
conciliarius ejus fuit? Hie enim est qui facit mirabilia magna solus, 
propterea illius tantummodo infinita virtute fieri possunt, qumcumque 
aut naturae vim aut modum excedunt. Et ut solus ille haec potest efii- 
cere, ita ille solus novit, quo loco, quo tempore miracula et quorum 
precibus facienda sint. Sed tamen neque omnes sancti viri miraculis 
excelluerunt; neque qui illorum aut magnitudine praestiterunt, aut copia, 
idcirco reliquos sanctitate superarunt. Non enim sanctitas cujusque 
signis, sed caritate aestimanda est. Two years before the appearance of 
the second edition, iij 1585, Mafiei, styled the Jesuit Livy, published at 
Rome his work, De Vita et Morihus S. Ignatii Loyolce Lihri tres ; and 
neither in this is aught related of the great founder of the Order, which 
deserves the name of a miracle, although here are some nearer approaches 
to such than in the earlier biography—remarkable intimations, as of the 
death or recovery of friends, glimpses of their beatified state, ecstatic 
visions in which Christ appeared to him; but even these introduced in 
a half-apologetic tone, the historian evidently declining to pledge him¬ 
self to their truth: Non' pauca de eodem admirabilia pj'cedicantur, quo¬ 
rum aliqua nobis hoc loco exponere visum est. But with miracles far 
more astounding and more numerous the Romish church has surrounded 


WITH OTHER CYCLES OF MIRACLES. 55 


higher moods, Tvith truest Christian insight, witness against 
those very tendencies by which they, with the rest of their 
contemporaries, were more or less borne away. Thus was 
it with regard to the over-valuing of miracles, the esteem¬ 
ing of them as the only evidences of an exalted sanctity. 
Against this what an unbroken testimony in all ages of 
the Church was borne; not, indeed, sufidcient to arrest the 
progress of an error into which the sense-bound generations 
of men only too naturally fall, yet witnessing that the 
Church herself was ever conscious that the holy life was in 
the sight of God of higher price than the wonderful works 
—that love is the greatest miracle of all—that to overcome 
the world, this is the greatest manifestation of the power 
of Christ in his servants.^ Upon this subject one passage 
from Chrysostom, in place of the many that might be 
quoted, and even that greatly abridged, must suffice.^ He 
is rebuking the faithful, that now, when their numbers 
were so large, they did so little to leaven the world, and 
this, when the Apostles, who were but twelve, effected so 
much; and he puts aside the excuse, ‘ But they had 
miracles at command,’ not with the answer, ^ So have we; ’ 
but in this language: ^ How long shall we use their 

liis great scholar, Francis Xavier. Miracles were as his daily food; to 
raise the dead was as common as to heal the sick. Even the very hoys 
who served him as catechists received and exercised a similar power of 
working wonders. Now there are, I believe, no historic documents 
whatever, of a contemporary date, which profess to vouch for these. 
We have further a series of letters written by this great apostle to the 
heathen, out of the midst of his work in the far East {S. Francisci 
Xaverii Epistolarum Libri ires Pragse, 1750),* letters showing him to 
have been one of the discreetest, as he was one of the most fervent, 
preachers of Christ that ever lived, and full of admirable hints for the 
missionary 5 but of miracles wrought by himself, of miracles which the 
missionary may expect in aid of his work, there occurs not a single 
word. 

^ Thus compare Augustine’s admirable treatment of the subject, 
Enarr. in Ps. cxxx., beginning with the words : Ergo sunt homines, quos 
delectat mira-culum facere, et ab eis qui profecerunt in Ecclesia miraculum 
exigunt, et ipsi qui quasi profecisse sibi videntur, talia volunt facere, et 
putant se ad Deum non pertinere, si non fecerint. 

^ Horn. xlvi. in Matth. 


56 


THE EVANGELICAL, COAIPARED 


miracles as a pretext for oar sloth.? ^^And what was 
it then/’ you say, which made the Apostles so greats ” 
I answer. This, that they contemned money; that they 
trampled on vain-glory; that they renounced the world. 
If they had not done thus, hut had been slaves of their 
passions, though they had raised a thousand dead, they 
would not merely have profited nothing, but would have 
been counted as impostors. What miracle did John, who 
reformed so many cities, of whom yet it is expressly said, 
that he did no sign ? And thou, if thou hadst thy choice, 
to raise the dead in the name of Christ, or thyself to die 
for his name, which wouldst thou choose ? Would it not 
be plainly the latter? And yet that were a miracle, and 
this is but a worh. And if one gave thee the choice of 
turning all grass into gold, or bemg able to despise all gold 
as grass, wouldst thou not choose the latter? And rightly; 
for by this, thou wouldst most effectually draw men to the 
truth. This is not my doctrine, but the blessed Paul’s : 
for when he had said, “ Covet earnestly the best gifts,” and 
then added, “ yet show I unto you a more excellent way,” 
he did not adduce miracles, but love, as the root of all 
good things.’ ^ 

Pew points present greater difficulties than the attempt 
to fix accurately the moment when these miraculous 
powers were, withdrawn from the Church, and it entered 
into its permanent state, with only its present miracles of 
grace and the record of its past miracles of power; instead 

^ Compare a teautiful passage by St. Bernard, Serm. xlvi. 8, in Cant. 
Neander {Kirch. Gesch. yoL iv. pp. zss-^S?) quotes many like utterances 
coming from the chief teachers of the Church, even in the midst of the 
darkness of the ninth century. Thus Odo of Clugny relates of a pious 
layman, to whom some grudged his reputation for sanctity, seeing that 
he wrought no miracles, how that once detecting a thief in the act of 
robbing him, he not merely dismissed him, but gave him all that which 
he would wrongfully have taken away, and adds, Certe mihi videtur, quod 
id magis admiratione dignum sit, quam si furem rigere in saxi duiitiem 
fecisset. Neander (vol. v. pp. 477, 606) collects other medieval teati- 
monies to the same effect. 


WITH OTHER CYCLES OF MIRACLES. 57 


of having actually going forward in the midst of it those 
miracles of power as well, with which it first asserted it¬ 
self in the world. This is difficult, because it is difficult 
to say at what precise moment the Church was no longer 
in the act of becoming, but contemplated in the mind of 
God as now actually beings, when to the wisdom of God 
it appeared that He had adequately confirmed the word 
^vith signs following, and that this framework might be 
withdrawn from the completed arch, these props and 
strengthenings of the infant plant might safely be re¬ 
moved from the hardier tree.^ 

That their retrocession was gradual, that this might}' 
tide of power should have ebbed only by degrees,^ this was 
what was to be looked for in that spiritual world which, 
like God’s natural world, is free from all harsh and abrupt 

^ This image is Cbrysostom’s {Horn, :jilii. in Inscript. Act. Apostt .'): 

^ As therefore a husbandman, having lately committed a young tree to 
the bosom of the earth, counts it worthy, being yet tender, of much 
attention, on every side fencing it rourd, protecting it with stones and 
thorns, so that neither it may be torn up by the winds, nor harmed by 
the cattle, nor injured by any other injury j but when he sees that it is 
fast rooted and has sprung up on high, he takes away the defences, since 
now the tree can defend itself from any such wrong; thus has it been in 
the matter of our faith. When it was newly planted, while it was yet 
tender, great attention was bestowed on it on every side. But after it 
was fixed and rooted and sprung up on high, after it had filled all the 
world, Christ both took away the defences, and for the time to come 
removed the other strengthenings. Wherefore at the beginning He gave 
gifts even to the unworthy, for the early time had need of these helps to 
faith. But now He gives them not even to the worthy, for the strength 
of faith no longer needs this assistance.’ Compare Gregory the Great 
{Horn. xxix. in Evang.') : Hsec [signa] necessaria in exordio Ecclesise 
fuerunt. Ut enini fides cresceret, miraculis fuerat nutrienda: quia et 
nos cum arbusta plantamus, tamdiu eis aquam infundimus, quousque ea 
in terra jam convaluisse videamus; et si semel radicem fixerint, in rigandc 
eessamus. 

^ ThusOrigen {Con. Cels. ii. 46) calls the surviving gifts in the Church 
vestiges of former powers; and again (ii. 8) he speaks of them as 

ixvi] Kfti Tivd 7f gtiZ,ova. Compare ii. 33 ; Irenseus, ii. 32; Justin Martyr, 
Apol. ii. 6. There is a curious passage in Abelard {Sermo de Joan. Rapt. 
p. 967), directed against the claimants to the power of working miracles 
in his day. Though he does not mention St. Bernard, one cannot doubt 
that he has him in his eve. 


58 


THE EVANGELICAL, COMPARED 


transitions, in wliicli each line melts imperceptibly into 
tbe next. We can conceive the order of retrocession to 
have been in this way; that divine power which dealt in 
all its fulness and intensity in Christ, was first divided 
among his Apostles, who, therefore, individually wrought 
fewer and smaller works than their Lord. It was again 
from them further subdivided among the ever-multiplying 
numbers of the Church, who, consequently, possessed not 
these gifts in the same intensity and plenitude as did the 
twelve. At the same time it must always be remembered 
that these receding gifts were ever helping to form that 
which should be their own substitute; that if they were 
waning, that which was to supply their room was ever 
waxing,—that they only waned as that other waxed; the 
flower dropped off only as the fruit was being formed. If 
those wonders of a first creation have left us, yet they did 
not this till they could bequeath in their stead the standing 
wonder of a Church,^ itself a wonder, and embracing 
manifold wonders in its bosom.^ Tor are not the laws of 
the spiritual world, as they are ever working in the midst 
of us, a continual wonder? What is the new birth in 
Baptism, and the communion of Christ’s body and blood 
in the Holy Eucharist, and the life of God in the soul, and 
a kingdom of heaven in the world, what are these but 

1 Augustine {Be Civ. Bei, xxii. 8): Quisquis adhuc prodigia, uti 
credat, inquirit, magnum est ipse prodigium, qui mundo credente, non 
credat. 

Coleridge {Literary Bemains, vol. iv. p. a6o): ^The result of my 
own meditations is, that the evidence of the Gospel, taken as a total, is 
as great for the Christians of the nineteenth century as for those of the 
apostolic age. I should not he startled if I were told it were greater. 
But it does not follow that this equally holds good of each component 
part. An evidence of the most cogent clearness, unknown to the primi¬ 
tive Christians, may compensate for the evanescence of some evidence 
which they enjoyed. Evidences comparatively dim have waxed into 
noonday splendour, and the comparative wane of others once effulgent 
is more than indemnified by the synopsis rov TcavroQ which we enjoy, and 
by the standing miracle of a Christendom commensurate and almost 
synonymous with the civilised world.’ 


WITH OTHER CYCLES OF MIRACLES. 59 


€very one-of them wonders?^ wonders in this like the 
wonders of ordinary nature, as distinguished from those 
which accompany a new in-coming of power, that they are 
under a law which we can anticipate; that they conform 
to an absolute order, and one the course of which we can 
understand;—but not therefore the less divine.^ How 

^ The wonder of the existence and subsistence of a Church in the 
world is itself so great, that Augustine says strikingly, that to believe, 
or not to believe, the miracles is only an alternative of wonders. If you 
believe not the miracles, you must at least believe this miracle, that the 
world was converted without miracles (si miraculis non creditis, saltern 
huic miraculo credendum est, mundum sine miraculis fuisse conversum ; 
cf. De Civ. Dei, xxii. 8, i). And on the relation of the helps to faith, 
the witnesses of God’s presence in the midst of his Church, which 
severally we have, and which the early Christians had, he says {Serm. 
ccxliv. 8) : Apostoli Christum praesentem videbant: sed toto orbe terra- 
rum diffusam Ecclesiam non videbant: videbant caput, et de corpore 
credebant. Habemus vices nostras: habemus gratiam dispensationis et 
distributionis nostrse: ad credendum certissimis documentis tempora 
nobis in una fide sunt distributa. Illi videbant caput, et credebant de 
corpore: nos videmus corpus, et credamus de capite. Augustine’s own 
judgment respecting the continuance of miracles in the Church varied 
at different times of his life. In an early work, De Vera Religione, xxv. 
47, he denies their continuance : Cum enim Ecclesia Catholica per totum 
orbem diffusa atque fundata sit, nec miracula ilia in nostrum tempus 
durare permissa sunt, ne animus semper visibilia qusereret; while in his 
Retractatims (i. 13, 25) he withdraws this statement, or limits it to such 
miracles as those which accompanied baptism at the first; and De Civ. 
Dei, xxii. 8, he enumerates at great length miracles, chiefly or exclusively 
miracles of healing, which he believed to have been wrought in his own 
time, and coming more or less within his own knowledge. On this 
whole subject see Mozley, Eight Lectures on Miracles, pp. 210, 373, 383. 

2 Gregory the Great {Horn. xxix. m Emng.') : Sancta quippe Ecclesia 
quotidie spiritaliter facit quod tunc per Apostolos corporaliter faciebat. 
Nam sacerdotes ejus cum per exorcismi gratiam manum credentibus im- 
ponunt, et habitare malignos spiritus in eorum mente contradicunt, quid 
aliud faciunt, nisi daemonia ejiciunt? Et fideles quique qui jam vitae 
veteris secularia verba derelinquuut, sancta aiiteni mysteria insonant, 
Conditoris sui laudes et potentiam, quantum praevalent, narrant, quid 
aliud faciunt, nisi novis linguis loquimtur ? Qui dum bonis suis exhor- 
tationibus malitiam de alienis cordibus auferunt, serpentes tollunt. Et 
dum pestiferas suasiones audiimt, sed tamen ad operationem pravam 
minime pertrahuntur, mortiferum quidem est quod bibunt, sed non eis 
nocebit. Qui quoties proximos suos in opere bono infirmari conspiciunt, 
dum eis tota virtute concurrunt, et exemplo suae operationis illorum 
vitam roborant qui in propria actione titubant, quid aliud faciunt, nisi 
super aegros inanus imponunt, ut bene habeant ? Quae nimirum miracula 


6 o 


THE EVANGELICAL, COMPARED 


meanly do we esteem of a Cliiircli, of its marvellous gilts, 
of the powers of the coming world which are working 
within it, of its Word, of its Sacraments, when it seems 
to us a small thing that in it men are new born, raised 
from the death of sin to the life of righteousness, the eyes 
of their understanding enlightened, and their ears opened, 
unless we can tell of more visible and sensuous wonders as 
well. It is as though the heavens should not declare to 
us the glory of God, nor the firmament show us his handi¬ 
work, except at some single moment such as that when 
the sun was standing still upon Gibeon, and the moon in 
Ajalon. 

While then it does not greatly concern us to know when 
this power was withdrawn, what does vitally concern us is, 
that we suffer not these carnal desires after miracles, as 
though they were necessarily saints who had them, and 
they but imperfect Christians who were without them, as 
though the Church were inadequately furnished and 
spiritually impoverished which could not show them, to 
rise up in our hearts; being, as they are, ever ready to 
rise up in the natural heart of man, to which power is so 
much dearer than holiness. There is no surer proof than 

tanto majora sunt, quanto spiritalia, tanto majora sunt, quanto per liaec 
non corpora sed animae suscitantur. . . . Corporalia ilia miracila osten- 
dunt aliquando sanctitatem, non autem faciunt: haec vero spiritalia, quae 
aguntur in mente, virtutem vitae non ostendunt, sed faciunt. Ilia habere 
et mali possunt; istis autem perfrui nisi Loni non possunt. . . . Nolite 
ergo, fratres carissimi, amare signa quae possunt cum reprobis haberi 
communia, sed haec quae modo diximus, caritatis atque pietatis miracula 
amate ; quae tanto securiora sunt, quanto et occulta; et de quibus apud 
Dominum eo major fit retributio, quo apud homines minor est gloria. 
Compare Augustine, Serm. Ixxxviii. 3; and Origen (Cow. Cels. ii. 48) 
finds in these wonders of grace which are ever going forward, the fulfil¬ 
ment of the promise that those who believed should do greater things 
than Christ Himself (John xiv. 12). Bernard too. In Ascen. Dom. 
Serm. i., has some beautiful remarks on the better miracles, which are 
now evermore finding place in Christ’s Church. For the literature upon 
this, and indeed upon every other part of the subject, see the admirable 
article on Miracles by the Bishop of Killaloe in the Dictionary of the 
Bible, vol. ii. p. 283. 


WITH OTHER CYCLES OF MIRACLES. 6i 


tlie utterance of sentiments sucli as tliese, that the true 
glory of the Church is hidden from our eyes—that some 
of its outward trappings and ornaments have caught our 
fancy; and not the fact that it is all-glorious within, an 
ansvver to the deepest needs of the spirit of man, which 
has taken possession of our hearts and minds. It is little 
which we ourselves have known of the miracles of grace, 
when they seem to us poor and pale, and only the miracles 
of power have any attraction in our eyes. 


CHAPTEE V. 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIBACLE 8 , 


I. The Jewish. 


RIGID monotheistic religion like the Jewish left hut 



-AjL one way of escape from the authority of miracles, 
which once were acknowledged to be such, and not mere 
collusions and sleights of hand. There remained nothing 
to say, but that which the adversaries of the Lord con¬ 
tinually did say, namely, that the works wrought by Him 
were .wrought from beneath: ‘ This fellow doth not cast 
out devils but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils ’ * 
(Matt. xii. 24; cf. Mark iii. 22-27; Luke xi. 15-22). We 
have our Lord’s own answer to the deep malignity of this 
assertion; his appeal, namely, to the whole tenor of his 
doctrine, and of the miracles wherewith He confirmed that 
doctrine—whether they were not altogether for the over¬ 
throwing of the kingdom of evil,—whether a lending by 
Satan of such power to Him would not be wholly incon¬ 
ceivable, since it were merely and altogether suicidal. 
For though it might be quite intelligible that Satan 
should bait his hook with some good, array himself as an 
angel of light, and do for a while deeds that might appear 
as deeds of light, so better to carry through some mighty 
delusion— 


‘ Win men with honest trifles, to hetray them 
In deepest consequence,’ 


^ They regarded Him as planum in signis (Tertullian, Adv. Marc, 
iii.* 6; cf. Apolog. xxi.). This charge is drest out with infinite blas¬ 
phemous additions in the later Jewish hooks (see Eisenmenger, Entdecht, 
Judenth. vol. i. p. 14.8, seq.). 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES. 63 

just as Darius was willing tliat a small detachment of his 
army slionld perish, that so the mighty deceit which Zopyrus 
was practising against Babylon might succeed,^—yet the 
furthering upon his part of such an assault on his own king¬ 
dom as, if successful, must overturn it altogether, is quite 
inconceivable. That kingdom, thus in arms against itself, 
could not stand, but must have an end. He who came, as 
all his words and his deeds testified, to ‘ destroy the works 
of the devil,’ could not have come armed with Ms power, 
and helped onward by his aid. It is not of a pact with 
the Evil One which this tells, but of Another mightier than 
that Evil One, who has entered with power into his strong¬ 
hold, and who, having bound him, is now spoiling his goods. 
Our Lord does in fact repel the accusation, and derive 
authority to his miracles, not from the power which they 
display, however that may be the first thing that brings 
them into consideration, but from the ethical ends which 
they serve. He appeals to every man’s conscience, whether 
the doctrine to which they bear witness, and which bears 
witness to them, be from above, or from beneath: and if 
from above, then the power with which He accomplished 
them could not have been lent Him from. beneath, since 
the kingdom of lies would never so contradict itself, as 
seriously to help forward the establishment of the kingdom 
of truth.^ 

There is, indeed, at first sight a difficulty in the argu¬ 
ment which our Saviour draws from the oneness of the 
kingdom of Satan—namely, that the very idea of this 
kingdom, as we present it to ourselves, is that of an 
anarchy, of blind rage and hate not merely against God, 
but every part of it warring against every other. And this 
is most deeply true, that hell is as much in arms against 
itself as against heaven; neither does our Lord deny that 
in respect of itself that kingdom is infinite > contradiction 

^ Herodotus, iii. 155. 

2 Eusebius {Dem. Evang. iii. 6) makes much of this argument. 


64 THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES. 


and division: only He asserts that in relation to the Tcing^ 
dom of heaven it is at one: there is one life in it and one 
soul in opposition to that. Just as a nation or kingdom 
may embrace within itself infinite parties, divisions, dis¬ 
cords, jealousies, and heart-burnings; yet, if it is to 
subsist as a nation at all, it must not, as regards other 
nations, have lost its sense of unity; when it does so, of 
necessity it falls to pieces and perishes. To the Pharisees 
He says: ‘ This kingdom of evil subsists; by your own 
confession it does so ; it cannot therefore have denied the 
one condition of its existence, which is, that it should 
not lend its powers to the overthrowing of itself, that it 
should not side with its own foes; my words and works 
declare that I am its foe, it cannot therefore be siding 
with Me.’ 

This accusation brought against the miracles of Christ, 
that they were done by the power of an evil magic, the 
heathen also sometimes used; but evidently having bor¬ 
rowed this weapon from the armoury of the Jewish adver¬ 
saries of the faith.* And in their mouths, who had no 
such earnest idea of the kingdom of God upon one side 
and the kingdom of evil on the other, and of the fixed 
limits which divide the two, who had peopled the inter¬ 
mediate space with middle powers, some good, some evil, 
some mingled of both, the accusation was not at all so 
deeply malignant as in the mouth of a Jew. It was little 

^ See a curious passage, Origen, Con. Cels, i. 68 ; cf. i. 6; ii. 49 ; yiii. 
9; and compare Augustine, De Cons. Evang. i. 9-11; Jerome, Erev. in 
Psal. Ixxxi. in fine ; Arnobius, Adv. Gen. i. 43, who mentions this as one 
of the calumnies of the heathen against the Lord: Magus fuit, clandes- 
tinis artibus omnia ilia perfecit: ^gyptiorum ex adytis angelorum 
potentium nomina et remotas furatus est disciplinas; cf. 53. This 
charge of fetching his magical skill from Egypt, which Celsus repeats 
(Origen, Con. Cels. i. 28, 38 ; cf. Eusebius, Bern. Evang. iii. 6), betrays 
at once the Jewish origin of the accusation. It is evermore recurring 
in Jewish books. Egypt, say they, was the natural home of magic, so 
that if the magic of the world were divided into ten parts, Egypt would 
possess nine 5 and there, even as the Christian histories confess, Jesus 
resided two years (Eisenmenger, Entdeckt. Judenth, vol. i. pp. 149, 166), 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES, 65 


more than a stone which they fonnd conveniently at hand 
to fling, and with them is continually passing over into 
the charge that those works were wrought by trick—that 
they were conjuror’s arts; the line between the two charges 
is continually disappearing. The heathen, however, had a 
method more truly their own of evading the force of the 
Christian miracles, which is now to consider. 

2. The Heathen. (Celsijs, Hierocles, Porphyet.) 

A religion like the Jewish, which, besides God and the 
Angels in direct and immediate subordination to Him, left 
no spirits conceivable but those in rebellion against Him, 
the absolutely and entirely evil, this, as has been observed 
already, left no choice, when once the miracle was ad¬ 
judged not to be from God, but to ascribe it to Satan. 
There was nothing between; it was from heaven, or, if 
not from heaven, from hell. But it was otherwise in the 
heathen world, and with the ^ gods many ’ of polytheism. 
So long as these lived in the minds of men, the argument 
from the miracles was easily evaded. For what at the 
utmost did they prove in respect of their author ? What 
but this, that a god, it might be one of the higher, or 
it might be one of the middle powers, the Bai/iovs 9 , the 
intermediate deities, was with him ? What was there, men 
replied, in this circumstance, which justified the demand 
of an absolute obedience upon their parts? Wherefore 
should they yield exclusive allegiance to Him that wrought 
these works ? The gods had spoken often by others also, 
had equipped them with powers equal to or greater than 
those claimed by his disciples for Jesus; yet no man there¬ 
fore demanded for them that they should be recognized as 
absolute lords of the destinies of men. Esculapius per¬ 
formed wonderful cures; Apollonius went about the world 
healing the sick, expelling demons, raising the dead; - 

* Lactantius, Inst. Div. v. 3. 


66 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES. 


Aristeas disappeared from tlie earth in as marvellous a 
way as the founder of the Christian faith: * yet no man 
built upon these wonders a superstructure so immense 
as that which the Christians built upon the wonders of 
Christ.2 

Thus Celsus, as we learn from more than one passage 
in Origen’s reply, adduces now the mythic personages ot 
antiquity, now the magicians of a later date; though 
apparently with no very distinct purpose in his mind, but 
only with the feeling that somehow or other he can play 
them off against the divine Author of our religion, and 
defeat his claims to the allegiance of men. Tor it cer¬ 
tainly remains a question how much credence he gave 
himself to the miracles which he adduced — Origen® 
charges him with not believing them—whether, sharing 
the almost universal scepticism of the educated classes oi 
his day, it was not rather his meaning that all should fall, 
than that all should stand, together. Hierocles, governor 
of Bithynia, a chief instigator of the cruelties under Dio¬ 
cletian,—and who, if history does not belie him, wielded 
arms of unrighteousness on both hands against the Chris¬ 
tian faith, the persecutor’s sword and the libeller’s pen,— 

* Origen, Can. Cels. iii. 27. 

* The existence of false cycles of miracles should no more cast a sus¬ 
picion upon all, or cause to doubt those which present themselves with 
marks of the true, than the appearance of a parhelion forerunning the sun 
should cause us to deny that he was travelling up from beneath the 
horizon, for which rather it is an evidence. The false money passes, not 
because there is none better, and therefore all have consented to receive 
it, but because there is a good money, under colour of which the false is 
accepted. Thus is it with the longing which has existed ‘ at all times 
and in all ages after sonie power which is not circumscribed by the rules 
of ordinary visible experience, but which is superior to these rules and 
can transgress them.’ The mythic stories in which such longings find 
an apparently historic clothing and utterance, so far from being eyed 
with suspicion, should be most welcome to the Christian inquirer. The 
enemies of the faith will of course parade these shadows, in the hopes of 
mrding us believe that our substance is a shadow too; but they are 
worse than simple who are cozened by so palpable a fraud. 

® Con. Cels. iii. 22. 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES. 67 

followed in the same line. His book we know from the 
extracts in the answer of Eusebius, and the course of his 
principal arguments. Having recounted various miracles 
wrought, as he affirms, by Apollonius, he proceeds thus: 

‘ Yet do we not account him who has done such things for 
a god, only for a man beloved of the gods: while the 
Christians, on the contrary, on the ground of a few insig¬ 
nificant wonder-works, proclaim their Jesus for a God.’ ^ 
He presently, it is true, shifts his arguments, and no 
longer admits the miracles, only denying the couelusions 
dravm from them; but rather denies that they have any 
credible attestation: in his blind hate setting them in 
this respect beneath the miracles of Apollonius, which 
this ^ lover of truth,’ for he writes under the name of 
Philalethes, declares to be far more worthily attested. 

This Apollonius (of Tyana in Cappadocia), whose his¬ 
torical existence there seems no reason to call in question, 
was probably born about the time of the birth of Christ, 
and lived as far as into the reign of Herva, a.d. 97. Save 
two or three isolated notices of an earlier date, the only 
record which we have of him is a Life, written by Philo- 
stratus, a rhetorician of the second century, and pro¬ 
fessing to be founded on contemporary documents, yet 
everywhere betraying its unhistoric character. It is in 
fact a philosophic romance, in which the revival and re¬ 
action of paganism in the second century is portrayed. 
Yet I cannot think that Life to have been composed with 
any purpose directly hostile to the new faith, but only to 
prove that they of the old religion had their mighty 
wonder-worker as well. It was composed indeed, as seems 
to me perfectly clear, with an eye to the life of our Lord; 
the parallels are too remarkable to have been the effect of 

^ In tbe same way Arnobius {Adv. Gen. i. 48) brings in the Heathen 
adversary saying it is idle to make these claims (frustra tantum arrogas 
Christo) on the score of the miracles, when so many others have done 
the like. 

4 


68 THE ASSAULTS ON THE AIIRACLES. 


chance; Mn a certain sense also in emulation and rivalry; 
yet not in hostile opposition, not as implying this was 
the Saviour of men, and not that; nor, yet as some of 
Lucian’s works, in a mocking irony of the things which are 
written concerning the Lord.^ This later use which has 
often been made of the book, must not be confounded with 
its original purpose, which was different. The first, I 
believe, who so used it, was Charles Blount,® one of the ear¬ 
lier English Deists. And passing over some other insig¬ 
nificant endeavours to make the book tell against revealed 
religion, endeavours in which the feeble hand, however 
inspired by hate, yet wanted strength and skill to launch 
the dart, we come to Wieland’s Agathodoemon, in which 
neither malice nor dexterity was wanting, and which, pro¬ 
fessing to explain upon natural grounds the miracles of 
Apollonius, yet unquestionably points throughout at one 
greater than the wonder-worker of Tyana, with a hardly 
suppressed de te fabula narratur running through the 
whole.^ 

1 See, for instance, upon the raising of tte widow’s son, tlie parallel 
miracle which I have adduced from the life of Apollonius. The above 
is Baur’s conclusion in his instructive little treatise Apollonius von Tyana 
und Christus, Tubingen, 183Ji. 

2 His Thilopseudes, for instance, and his Vera Historia. Thus I can 
assent only to the latter half of Huet’s judgment {Lem. Evany, prop. ix. 
147): Id spectasse imprimis videtur Philostratus, ut invalescentem 
jam Christi fidem ac doctrinam deprimeret, opposite hoc omnis doctrinse, 
sanctitatis, ac mirificae virtutis feeneo simulacro. Itaque ad Christi 
exemplar hanc expressit effigiem, et pleraque ex Christi Jesu historia 
Apollonio accommodavit, ne quid ethnici Christianis invidere possent. 

* In his now scarce translation, with notes, of The two Jirst hooks of 
Philostratus, London, 1680, with this significant motto from Seneca, Cum 
omnia inincerto sint, fave tibi, et crede quod mavis. Compare Apollonius 
of Tyana, the Pagan Christ of the Third Century, by Albert Bdville, 
English Translation, London, 1866. 

^ The work of Philostratus has been used with exactly an opposite 
aim by Christian apologists, namely, to bring out, by comparison with 
the best wLich heathenism could offer, the surpassing glory of Christ, 
Cudworth, in his Intellectual System, iv. 15, occupies himself at a con¬ 
siderable length with Apollonius. Here may probably have been the 
motive to Blount’s book, which followed only two years after the publi¬ 
cation of Cudworth’s great work. Henry More, too (Mystery of God- 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES. 69 

The arguments drawn from these parallels, so far as they 
were adduced in good faith and in earnest, have, of course, 
perished with the perishing of polytheism from the minds 
of men. Other miracles can no longer be played off against 
Christ’s miracles; the choice which remains now is between 
these and none. 


3. The Pantheistic. (Spinoza.) 

These two classes of assailants of the Scripture miracles, 
the Jewish and the heathen, allowed the miracles them¬ 
selves to stand unquestioned as facts, but either challenged 
their source, or denied the consequences drawn from them 
by the Church. Not so the pantheistic deniers of the 
miracles, who assailed them not as being of the devil, not 
as insufficient proofs of Christ’s claims of absolute lordship; 
but cut at their very root, denying that any miracle was 
possible, since it was contrary to the idea of God. For 
these opponents of the truth Spinoza may be said, in 
modern times, to bear the word; the objection is so con¬ 
nected with his name, that it will be well to hear it as he 
has uttered it. That objection is indeed only the necessary 
consequence of his philosophical system. Now the first 
temptation on making acquaintance with that system is 
to contemplate it as a mere and sheer atheism; and such 
has ever been the ordinary charge against it; nor, in study¬ 
ing his works, is it always easy to persuade oneself that 
it is anything else, or that the various passages in which 
Spinoza himself assumes it as something different, are 
more than inconsequent statements, with which he seeks 
to blind the eyes of others, and to avert the odium of this 
charge of atheism from himself. And yet atheism it is 
not, nor is it even a material, however it may be o, formal, 

Uness, iv. 9-12); compares at large the miracles of Christ ^ith those 0/ 
Apollonius. 


70 THE ASSAULTS ON THE AIIRACLES. 


pantheism. He does not,—and all justice requires that 
this should be acknowledged,—bring down and resolve God 
into nature, but rather takes np and loses nature in God. 
It is only man whom he submits to a blind fate, and for 
whom he changes, as indeed for man he does, all ethics 
into physics. But the idea of freedom, as regards God, is 
saved; since, however, he affirms Him immanent in nature 
and not transcending it, this is only because He has Him¬ 
self chosen these laws of nature as the one unchangeable 
manner of his working, and constituted them in his wis¬ 
dom so elastic, that they shall prove, under every circum¬ 
stance and in every need, the adequate organs and servants 
of his will. He is not bound to nature otherwise than by 
that, his own will; the laws which limit Him are of his 
own imposing; the necessity which binds Him to them is 
not the necessity of any absolute fate, but of the highest 
fitness. Still, however, Spinoza does affirm such a neces¬ 
sity. The natura naturans must unfold itself in the natura 
naturata, and thus excludes the possibility of any revela¬ 
tion, whereof the very essence is that it is a new beginning, 
a new unfolding by God of Himself to man, and especially 
excludes the miracle, which is itself at once the accompani¬ 
ment, and itself a constituent part, of a revelation. 

Let me here observe, that to deny that miracles can 
find a fitting place in God’s moral and spiritual govern¬ 
ment of the world is one thing; to deny that they can 
find a 'possible place, that there is any room for them 
there, is another. It may be indeed a question whether the 
latter has not sometimes been intended when the former 
only was pretended. Still the denial of their fitness, where 
honestly meant, and where nothing else is lurking behind, 
involves no necessary assault on the essential attributes of 
God. With the denial of the possibility of miracles it is 
otherwise. In this denial there is in fact a withdrawal 
from Him of all which constitutes Him more than the 
animating principle of the world. He is no longer a God 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES. 


72 


of freedom, a living God, above nature and independent of 
nature; but nature is tbe necessary form of bis existence, 
and condition of his manifestation. Shut up and confined 
within limits which He is impotent to overpass, in this 
strait-waistcoat of nature. He is less favoured than some 
of the meanest of his creatures. If the snail is tied to its 
house, it can at worst move up and down with this house 
whither it will; if the silkworm is closely enveloped in the 
cerements of its cocoon, it at all events has the prospect 
of bursting as a butterfly from these. But there is no 
such liberty, no such hope of liberty, for a God who is 
enclosed within the limits of nature, and of nature as we 
know it now, and who can onl}’ manifest Himself through 
this. 

It would profit little to enter in detail on the especial 
charges which Spinoza brings against the miracle, as low¬ 
ering, and unworthy of, the idea of God. They are but the 
application to a particular point of the same charges which 
he brings against all revelation, namely, that to conceive 
any such is to dishonour, and cast a slight upon, God’s 
great original revelation of Himself in nature and in man; 
a charging of that with such imperfection and incomplete¬ 
ness, as that it needed the author of the world’s laws 
to interfere in aid of those laws, lest they should prove 
utterly inadequate to his purposes.^ With the miracle in 

1 In that half-recantation which Henry Heine made at the last of all 
the proud things that he had spoken against God, and which, imperfect 
though it he, none can read without the deepest interest, these remark¬ 
able words occur; he is tracing the steps of his return to God,—may it 
indeed have been a return to Him I—and says: ^ On my way I found the 
god of the Pantheists, but 1 could make nothing of him. This poor 
visionary creature is interwoven with and grown into the world. Indeed 
he is almost imprisoned in it, and yawns at you, without voice, without 
power. To have will, one must have personality, and to manifest oneself, 
one must have elbow-room.’ 

« Tract. Theol. Pol vi.: Nam cum virtus et potentia naturae sit ipsa 
Dei virtus et potentia, leges autem et regulae naturae ipsa Dei decreta, 
Dnmino credendum est, potentiam naturae infinitam esse, ejusque leges 
adeo latas, ut ad omnia quae et ab ipso divino intellectu concipiuntur, se 
extendant; alias epim quid aliud statuitur, quam quod Deus naturam 


72 THE ASSAULTS OH THE MIRACLES. 


particular he finds fault, as a bringing in of disorder into 
that creation, of which the onlj idea worthy of God is 
that of an unchangeable order. It is a making of God to 
contradict Himself, for the law which was violated by the 
miracle is as much God’s law as the miracle which vio¬ 
lated it.^ The answer to this objection has been already 
anticipated; the miracle is not a discord in nature, but the 
coming in of a higher harmony; not disorder, but instead 
of the order of earth, the order of heaven; not the viola¬ 
tion of law, but that which continually, even in this na¬ 
tural world, is taking place, the comprehension of a lower 
law in a higher; in this case the comprehension of a lower 
natural, in a higher spiritual law; with only such orderly 
violence done to the lower as is necessarily consequent 
upon this.^ 

When, further, he imputes to the miracle that it rests 
on a false assumption of the position which man occupies 
in the universe, flatters the notion that nature is to serve 
him, not he to bow to nature, it cannot be denied that it 
does rest on this assumption. But this were only a charge 
which would tell against it, supposing that true, which so 
far from being truth, is indeed his first great falsehood of 
all, namely, that God is first a God of nature, and only a 

adeo impotentem creaverit, ej usque leges et regulas adeo steriles 
statuerit, ut ssepe de uovo ei sub venire cogatur, si earn conservatam vult, 
et ut res ex vote succedaiit ? quod sane a ratione alienissimum esse 
existimo. 

1 On this matter Godet (Cofnm. sur VEvang. de St.- Jean, p. 361) has 
very excellently said : < Si I’ceuvre de la nature 6tait la pensee definitive 
du Cr^ateur, il est certain que le miracle serait souverainement impro¬ 
bable. Car un fait de ce genre ressemblerait a une retouche, et ce pro- 
edde serait indigne d’un tel artiste. Mais si la nature actuelle est une 
^bauche, d’ou doit se degager, avec le concours de la creature libre, une 
oeuvre superieure, dans laquelle la matiere sera purement I'organe et la 
splendeur de I’esprit, le miracle est, aux yeux du penseur, I’apparition 
anticipfSe et le prelude ravissant de ce nouvel ordre de choses. Ce n’est 
point un solde ; e’est une arrhe. 

^ Emerson adopts Spinoza’s aspect of a miracle when he says, ^ The 
word miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false"impres¬ 
sion. It is a monster; it is not one with the blowing clouds and the 
falling rain.’ 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES. 73 

God of men as they find tlieir place in tlie order of nature. 
If God be indeed only or chiefly the God of nature, and 
not in a paramount sense the God of grace, the God of 
men, if nature be indeed the highest, and man only created 
as furniture for this planet, it would be indeed absurd and 
inconceivable that the higher should serve, or give place 
to, the lower. But if, rather, man is Hhe crown of things,’ 
the end and object of all, if he be indeed the vicegerent 
of the Highest, the image of God, the first-fruits of his 
creatures, this world and all that belongs to it being but a 
school for the training of men, only having a worth and 
meaning when contemplated as such, then that the lower 
should serve, and, where need is, give way to the interests 
of the highest, were only beforehand to be expected.^ 

Here, as is so often the case, something much behind 
the miracle, something much earlier in men’s view of the 
relations between God and his creatures, has already deter¬ 
mined whether they should accept or reject it, and this, 
long before they have arrived at the consideration of this 
specific matter. 

4. The Sceptical. (Hume.) 

While Spinoza rested his objection to the miracles on 
the ground that the everlasting laws of the universe left 
no room for such, while, therefore, the form which the 
question in debate assumed in his hands was this. Are 
miracles (objectively) possible ? Hume, the legitimate child 
and pupil of the empiric philosophy of Locke, started his 
objection in altogether a different shape, namely, in this. 
Are miracles (subjectively) credible? He is, in fact, the 
sceptic, which,—taking the word in its more accurate sense, 
not as a denier of the truths of Christianity, but a doubter 

1 They are the truly wise, he says {Tract Theol. Pol. vi.), who aim not 
at this, ut natura iis, sed contra ut ipsi naturae pareant, utpote qui certe 
Bciunt, Deum naturam dirigere prout ejiis leges universales, non autem 
prout humanae naturae particulares leges exigunt, adeoque Deum non 
solius humaiii generis, sed totius nature rationem hahere. 


74 - 


THE ASSAULTS OH THE MIRACLES. 


of the possibility of arriving at any absolute truth,—Spinoza 
is as far as possible from being. To this question Hume’s 
answer is in the negative; or rather, in the true spirit of 
that philosophy which leaves everything in uncertainty, 

‘ It is always more probable that a miracle is false than 
true; it can therefore in no case prove anything else, 
since it is itself incapable of proof; ’—which thus he 
proceeds to show. In every case, he observes, of conflicting 
evidence, we weigh the evidence for and against the 
alleged facts, and give our faith to that side upon which 
the evidence preponderates, with an amount of confidence 
proportioned, not to the whole amount of evidence in its 
favour, but to the balance which remains after subtracting 
the evidence against it. Thus, if the evidence on the side 
of A might be set as =20, and that on the side of B as 
= 15, then our faith in A would remain 20—15 = 5; we 
giving our faith upon the side on which a balance of 
probabilities remains, and only to the extent of that 
balance. But every miracle, he goes on to say, is a case 
of conflicting evidence. In its favour is the evidence of 
the attesting witnesses; against it the testimony of all 
experience which has gone before, and which witnesses for 
an unbroken order of nature. When we come to balance 
these agaiust one another, the only case in which the 
evidence for the miracle could be admitted as prevailing 
would be that in which the falseness or error of the attesting 
witnesses would he a greater miracle than the miracle which 
they affirm. But no such case can occur. The evidence 
against a miracle having taken place is as complete as can 
be conceived. Even were the evidence in its favour as 
complete, it would only be proof against proof, and absolute 
suspension of judgment would be the wise man’s part. 
But the evidence in favour of the miracle never makes 
claim to any such completeness. It is always more likely 
that the attesting witnesses were deceived, or were willing 
to deceive, than that the miracle took place. For, however 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES. 


75 


!Xiany they may be, they must always be few compared with 
the multitudes who attest a fact which excludes their fact, 
namely, the uninterrupted succession of a natural order in 
the world; and those few, moreover, submitted to divers 
warping influences, from which the others, nature’s wit¬ 
nesses, are altogether free. Therefore there is no case in 
which the evidence for any one miracle is able to outweigh 
the a priori evidence which is against all miracles. Such 
is the conclusion at which Hume arrives. The argument, 
it will be seen, is sceptical throughout. Hume does not, 
like Spinoza, absolutely deny the possibility of a miracle; 
all he denies is that we can ever be convinced of one. Of 
two propositions or assertions that may he true which has 
the least evidence to support it 5 but according to the 
necessary constitution of our mental being, we must give 
our adherence to that which presents itself to us with the 
largest amount of evidence in its favour. 

Here again, as on a former occasion, so long as we abide 
in the region of nature, miraculous and improbable, mira¬ 
culous and incredible, may be admitted as convertible 
terms. But once lift up the whole discussion into a 
higher region, once acknowledge something higher than 
nature, a kingdom of God, and men the intended denizens 
of it, and the whole argument loses its strength and the 
force of its conclusions. Against the argument from ex¬ 
perience which tells against the miracle, is to be set, not, 
as Hume asserts, the evidence of the witnesses, which it is 
quite true can in no case itself be complete and of itself 
sufiicient, but this, plus the anterior probability that God, 
calling men to live above nature and sense, would in this 
manner reveal Himself as the Lord paramount of nature, 
the breaker through and slighter of the apparitions of 
sense; plus also the testimony which the particular miracle 
by its nature, its fitness, the glory of its circumstances, its 
intimate coherence as a redemptive act with the personality 
of the doer, in Coleridge’s words, ‘ its exact accordance 


76 THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES. 


witli tlie ideal of a true miracle is tlie reason,’ gives to tlie 
conscience tliat it is a divine work. The moral probabilities 
Hume has altogether overlooked and left out of account, 
and when they are admitted,—dynamic in the midst of his 
merely mechanic forces,—they disturb and indeed utterly 
overbear and destroy them. His argument is as that 
fabled giant, unconquerable so long as it is permitted to 
rest upon the earth out of which it sprung; but easily 
destroyed when once it is lifted into a higher world. It is 
not, as Hume would fain have us to believe, solely an 
intellectual question; but it is in fact the moral condition 
of men which will ultimately determine whether they will 
believe the Scripture miracles or not; this, and not the 
exact balance of argument on the one side or the other, 
which will cause this scale or that to kick the beam. 

He who already counts it likely that God will interfere 
for the higher welfare of men, who believes that there is a 
nobler world-order than that in which we live and move, 
and that it would be the blessing of blessings for that 
nobler to intrude into and to make itself felt in the region 
of this lower, who has found that here in this world we 
are bound by heavy laws of nature, of sin, of death, wh\ch 
no powers that we now possess can break, yet which must 
be broken if we are truly to live,—he will not find it hard 
to believe the great miracle, the coming of the Son of God 
in the flesh, and his declaration as the Son of God with 
power by the resurrection from the dead; because all the 
deepest desires and longings of his heart have yearned 
after such a deliverer, however little he may have been 
able even to dream of so glorious a fulfilment of those 
longings. And as he believes that greatest miracle, so 
will he believe all other miracles, which, as satellites of a 
lesser brightness, naturally wait upon that, clustering 
round and drawing their lustre from the central brightness 
of that greatest. He, upon the other hand, to whom this 
worid is all, who has lost all sense of a higher world with 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES. 77 

which, it must once have stood connected, who is disturbed 
with no longings for anything nobler than it gives, to 
whom ‘ the kingdom of God ’ is an unintelligible phrase, 
he will resist, by an intellectual theory if he can, or if not 
by that, by instinct, the miracle. Everything that is in 
him predisposes him to disbelieve it and the doctrines 
which it seals. To him who denies thus 2irLj final causes, 
who does not believe that humanity is being carried forward 
under a. mightier leading than its own to a certain and 
that a glorious end, who looks at the history of this world 
and of man as that of a bark tempest-tost long, with no 
haven to which it is bound, to him these moral probabilities 
are no probabilities; and this being so, we should learn 
betimes how futile it is to argue with men about our 
faith, who are the deniers of all upon which any faith can 
be built.* 

5. The Mieaoles only eelativelt i,iieaculous. 

(SCHLEIEEMACHEE.) 

Another scheme for getting rid of the miraculous ele¬ 
ment in the miracle, one often united with Spinoza’s 
a priori argument against it,^ and brought forward to 
explain the phenomenon of an apparent miracle, after that 
has shown that a real one was impossible, has been this. 
These works, it is said, were relative miracles,—miracles, 
in other words, for those in regard of whom they were first 
done,—as when a savage believes that a telescope has the 
power of bringing the far instantaneously near,—but no 
miracles in themselves, being but in fact the anticipation 

1 Augustine {De Util. Cred. xvi.): Si enim Dei providentia non prae- 
gidet rS)U8 humanis, nihil est de religione satagendum. See some 
valuable remarks on Hume and on bis position in Mill’s Logic, vol. ii. 
p. 187, 2d edit. 

* As by Spinoza himself, Ep. xxiii.: Dogare mihi liceat an noa 
homunciones tantam naturae cognitionem habeamus, ut determinar^ 
possimus, q[uousque ejus vis et potentia se extendit, et quid ejus vim 
superat ? 


78 TEE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES. 

of discoveries in the kingdom of nature, the -works of one 
who, having penetrated deeper into her mysteries than 
those around him, conld therefore wield powers which 
were nnknown, and bring about results which were inex¬ 
plicable, to themd It must be evident to the least 
thoughtful, that, however it may be sought to disguise 
the fact, the miracle does thus become no miracle,^ and 
the doer of it can no longer be recognized as commanding 
nature in a way specifically different from other men, but 
only as one who has a clearer or earlier insight than others 
into her laws and the springs of her power. We have 
indeed here nothing else but a decently veiled denial of 
the miracle altogether.^ Tor thus it has no longer an 
eternal significance. The circle of these wondrous works 
is no longer a halo which is to surround the head of him 

^ Thus Hase {Leben Jesu, p. io8): Sie sind zwar notliwendig begriffen 
im Naturzusammenhange, dalier nach diesem iiberall zu forsclien ist, 
aber sie iiberscbritten weit die Kenntniss und Kraft der Zeitgenossen. 
Reinbard: Miraculum est mutatio a manifestis naturae legibus abhorrens, 
cujus a nobis nulla potest e viribus naturalibus ratio reddi. Bonnet 
(Recherches Fhilosoph. sur les Preuves du Christianisme, Geneva, 1769) 
had already anticipated this definition of the miracle. 

^ Mirabile, but not miraculum. Augustine’s definition in one place 
{De Util. Cred. xvi.), Miraculum voco quicquid arduum aut insolitum 
supra speni vel facultatem mirantis apparet, is plainly faulty; it is the 
definition of the mirabile, not of the miraculum. Aquinas is more dis¬ 
tinct (Summ. Theol. i, qu. no, art. 4): Non sufiicit ad rationem mira- 
culi, si aliquid fiat praeter ordinem alicujus naturae particularis, sic enim 
aliquis miraculum faceret lapidem sursum projiciendo; ex hoc auteni 
aliquid dicitur miraculum, quod fit praeter ordinem totius naturae creatae, 
quo sensu solus Deus facit miracula. Nobis enim non omnis virtus 
naturae creatae nota; cum ergo fit aliquid praeter ordinem naturae creatae 
irobis notae per virtutem creaitani nobis ignotam, est quidem miraculum 
quoad nos, sed non simpliciter. 

2 J. Muller {Be Mirac. J. C. Nat. et Necess. par. ii. p. i) well charac¬ 
terizes this scheme: Quidvero? num de miraculorum necessitate ordia- 
mur a notione miraculi tollenda.P Si enim ex ea sententia mirabilia 
Christi opera e propriis naturae viribus secundum hujus legem, at 
absconditam, orta sunt, certum et constans discrimen haec inter et ilia 
quae quotidie in natura fieri videmns, reinanet nullum; omnia fluunt 
et miscentur; quae rerum natura heri gremio suo operuit, aperit hodie; 
quae etiam nunc abscondita sunt, posthac patebunt. Si vero, quod hodie 
miraculum, eras non erit, et hodie non est, sed esse tantum videtur. 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES. 79 


who wrought them for ever. With each enlargement of 
men^s knowledge of nature a star in his crown of glory is 
extinguished, till at length it fades altogether into the 
light of common day, nay, rather declares that it was 
never more than a deceitful and meteor fire at the best. 
For it implies a serious moral charge against the doer of 
these works, if he vents them as wonders, as acts of a 
higher power than nature’s, or allows others so to receive 
them, when indeed he entirely knows that they are 
wrought but according to her ordinary laws. It was well 
enough, according to the spirit in which he was working, 
for one of the early conquerors of the New World to make 
the Indians, whom he wished to terrify, believe that in his 
displeasure with them he would at a certain hour darken 
the moon, when indeed he did but foreknow an eclipse of 
her orb: ^ but in the kingdom of truth to use artifices like 
these were nothing else but by lies to seek to overturn the 
kingdom of lies. 

Schleiermacher^ endeavours so to guard this view as 
that it shall not appear an entire denial of the miracles, to 
dress it out and prevent its nakedness from being seen; 
but he does not, in fact, lift himself above it, Christ, he 
says, had not merely this deeper acquaintance with nature 
than any other that ever lived, but stands in a more in¬ 
ward connexion with nature. He is able to evoke, as from 
her hidden recesses and her most inward sanctuary, powers 
which none other could; although stiU powers which lay 
in her already. These facts, which seem exceptional, 
were deeply laid in the first constitution of the law; and 
now, at this turning-point of the world’s history, by the 
providence of God, who had arranged all things from the 
beginning of the world for the glory of his Son, did at 

^ Plutarch {De Def. Orac. xii.) mentions exactly the same trick of a 
Thessalian sorceress. A late writer upon the rule of the Jesuits in 
Paraguay accuses them of using artifices of the like kind for acquiring 
and maintaining an influence over their converts. 

* Ler Chrisfl Glauhe, vol. i. p. 100 ; vol. ii. p. 135. 


8o THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES. 


his bidding emerge. Yet, single and without analogy as 
these ‘ wonders of preforination ’ (for so one has called 
them) were, they belonged to the law as truly as, when the 
aloe flowers, or is said to flower, once in a hundred years, 
it yet does this according to the law of its being. For 
ninety and nine years it would have seemed to men not to 
be the nature of the plant to flower, yet the flowering of 
the hundredth year is only the unfolding of a germ latent 
in the heart of the plant from the beginning. 

We see in this scheme that attempt to reconcile and 
atone between revelation and science, which was the main 
purpose of all Schleiermacher’s writings. Yet is it im¬ 
possible to accept the reconciliation which he offers; as it 
is really made, however skilfully the sacrifice may be con¬ 
cealed, altogether at the expense of the miracle*—which, 
in fact, is no miracle, if it lay in nature already, if it was 
only the evoking of forces latent therein, not a new thing, 
not the bringing in of the novel powers of a higher world ; 
if the mysterious processes and powers by which those 
works were brought about, had been only undiscovered 
hitherto, and not undiscoverable, by the efforts of human 
inquiry. ^ 

Augustine has been sometimes quoted, but altogether 
unjustly, as maintaining this scheme of the relatively 
miraculous.^ It is quite true that, when arguing with the 
heathen, he does demand why they refuse to give credence 
to the Scripture miracles, when they believe so much that 

1 Schleiermacher indeed himself, in some letters of his in the Studien 
Wfid Kritiken, 1838, confesses as much, and does not shrink from this con¬ 
clusion : ‘ If they [the miracles] he really regarded as matters of fact, we 
must grant that so far as they have been produced in nature, analogies to 
them must he also found in nature; and thus the old idea of a miracle 
must be given up.’ 

* See Kostlin, De Miraculorum Naturd et Ratione, i860, p. 9. 

3 A certain favouring of this explanation of the miracle has in like 
manner been sometimes ascribed to Bishop Butler on the strength of a 
passage in his Analogy, pt, i, c. 2; in which, however, the understanding 
reader will at once recognize that he has quite another purpose in view; 
Bee Mozley, Eight Lectures on Miracles, p. 156. 


THE ASSAVLTS ON THE MIRACLES. 


8i 

is inexplicable bv any laws which their experience snp- 
plied; that he instances some real, some also entirely fabul¬ 
ous, phenomena of the natural world, such as fountains 
cold by night and hot by day,—others which extinguished 
a lighted torch, but set on fire an extinguished one,— 
stones which, once kindled, could not be quenched,— 
magnets which attracted iron, and other wonders, to 
which he and they gave credence alike. ^ But it is not 
herein his meaning to draw down the miracles to a level 
with natural appearances, hitherto unexplained, but 
capable of and waiting their explanation. Bather in these 
natural appearances he sees direct interpositions of the 
Divine Power; he does • not reckon that any added 
knowledge will bring them under laws of human ex¬ 
perience, and therefore he lifts them up to a level with 
the miracles. He did not merge the miracles in nature, 
but drew up a portion of nature into the region of the 
miraculous. However greatly as a natural philosopher he 
may have been here at fault, yet all extenuating of the 
miracle was far from him; indeed he ever refers it to the 
omnipotence of God as to its ultimate ground.^ 

When he affirms that much seems to be against nature, 
but nothing truly is, this may sound at first like the same 
statement of the miraculous being such merely in relation 
to certain persons and certain stages of our knowledge of 
this material world. But it is only in sound that it is 
similar. He has quite a different thought of nature from 
any that will admit such to be his meaning. Hature is 
for him but the outward expression of the will of God; 
and all which he affirms is, that God never can be con¬ 
trary to God; that there can be no collision of his wills ; 
that whatever comes in is as true an order, the result 
of as real a law, as that which gives place to it; which 
must needs be, since it has come in according to the will of 


* He Civ. Beif xxi. 5. 


® Ibid. xxi. 7. 


82 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MI EAGLES. 


God, which, will is itself the highest order, and law, and 
hamionj.' 

6. The Eatiohalistio. (Paulus.) 

The rise of rationalism,—which term I use for con¬ 
venience sake, and without at all consenting to its fitness, 
for it is as absurd a misnomer as when in the last 
century that was called/ree-thinking, which was assuredly 
to end in the slavery of all thought,—seems to have been 
in this manner. It may be looked at as an escape from 
the conclusions of mere Deists concerning Christ’s Person 
and his Word, upon the part of some, who had indeed 
abandoned the true faith of the Church concerning its 
Head, yet were not prepared to give up the last lingering 
vestiges of their respect for Holy Scripture and for Him 
of whom Scripture testified. They with whom this sys¬ 
tem grew up could no longer believe the miracles, they 
could no longer believe the great miracle in which all 
other are easily included, a Son of God in the Church’s 
sense of the term. They, too, were obliged to fall in with 
the first principles of the infidel adversary, that any who 
professed to accomplish miracles was either self-deceived 
or a deceiver, even as those who related such as having 
happened must be regarded as standing in the same 
dilemma. But what if it could be shown that Christ never 
professed to do any miracles, nor the sacred historians to 
record any ? if it could be shown that the sacred narratives, 
rightly read, gave no countenance to any such assumption, 
and that it was only the lovers of, and cravers after, the 
marvellous, who had found any miracles there ;—the 
books themselves having been intended to record merely 

1 See tLo quotation from Augustine, p. 12. That he had perfectly 
seized the essential property of a miracle, and distinguished it broadly 
from t'lie relatively miraculous, is plain from innumerable passages. 
Thus {De Civ. Dei, x. 16): Miracula, . . . non ea dico quae intervallis 
temporum occultis ipsius mundi caussis, verumtamen sub divina provi- 
dentia constitutis et ordinatis monstrosa contingunt, quales sunt inusitati 
partus animalium, et caelo terraque rerum inaolita facies. 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES. 83 


iiatm-al events ? Were not this an escape from the whole 
difficulty ? The divine, it is true, in these narratives 
would disappear; that, however, they did not desire to 
save; that they had already given up : but the human 
would be vindicated; the good faith, the honesty, the 
entire credibility of the Scripture historians, would remain 
unimpeached. And in Christ Himself there would be still 
that to which they could look up with reverence and love ; 
they could still believe in Him as the truthful founder of a 
religion which they shrunk from the thought of renoun¬ 
cing altogether. Ho longer being, as the Church declared 
Him, the worker of wonders, clothed with power from on 
high, nor professing to be that which He was not, as the 
blasphemers affirmed. He would stiU abide for them, the 
highest pattern of goodness which the world hitherto had 
seen, as He went up and down the world, healing and 
blessing, though with only the same means at his command 
as were possessed by other men. 

Their attempt was certainly a bold one. To suffer the 
sacred text to stand, and yet to find no miracles in it, did 
appear a hopeless task. For this, it must be always re¬ 
membered, altogether distinguishes this system from later 
mythic theories, that it does accept the Hew Testament as 
entirely historic; it does appeal to the word of Scripture as 
the ground and proof of its assertions ; its great assertion 
being that the Evangelists did not intend to relate miracles, 
but ordinary facts of everyday experience, works done by 
Jesus, now of friendship and humanity, now of medical 
skill, now, it might be, of chance and good fortune, or 
other actions which from one cause or other seemed to 
them of sufficient significance to be worth recording. 
Thus Christ, they say, did* not heal an impotent man at 
Bethesda, but only detected an impostor; He did not 
change water into wine at Cana, but brought in a new 
supply of wine when that of the house was exhausted ; 
He did not multiply the loaves, but, distributing his own 


84 THE ASSAULTS ON TEE MIRACLES. 


and his disciples’ little store, set an example of liberality^ 
wbicL. was quickly followed by others who had like stores, 
and thus there was sufficient for all; He did not cure 
blindness otherwise than any skilful oculist might do it;— 
which indeed, they observe, is clear; for with his own' 
lips He declared that He needed light for so delicate an 
operation—‘ I must work the works of Him that sent Me, 
while it is day; the night cometh, when no man can work’ 
(John ix. 4); He did not walk on the sea, but on the 
shore ; He did not tell Peter to find a stater in the fish’s 
mouth, but to catch as many fish as would sell for that 
money; He did not raise Lazarus from the dead, but 
guessed from the description of his disease that he was 
only in a swoon, and happily found it as He had guessed. 

This scheme, which many had already tried here and 
there, but which first appeared full blown and consistently 
carried through in the Commentary of Dr. Paulus, pub¬ 
lished in 1800, did not long survive in its first vigour. 
It perished under blows received from many and the most 
different quarters; for, not to speak of a reviving faith 
in the hearts of many, that God could do more than man 
could understand, even the children of this world directed 
against it the keenest shafts of their ridicule. Every 
philologist, nay, every man who believed that language 
had any laws, was its natural enemy, for it stood only by 
the violation of all these laws. Even the very advance of 
unbelief was fatal to it, for in it there was a slight linger¬ 
ing respect to the Word of God ; moved by which respect, 
it sought forcibly to bring that Word into harmony with 
its theory, as a better alternative than the renouncing of 
the authority of that Word altogether. But when men 
arose who did not shrink from •the other alternative, who 
had no desire to hold by that Word at all, then there was 
nothing to hinder them from at once coming back to the 
common-sense view of the subject, one which no art could 
long succeed in concealing, namely that the Evangelists 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES, 85 


did at any rate intend to record supernatural events. 
Those to whom the Scriptures were no authority were, 
thus far at least, more likely to interpret them aright, 
that they were not under the temptation to twist and 
pervert them, so to bring them into apparent agreement 
with their own systems.' 

This scheme of interpretation, thus assailed from so 
many sides, and itself merely artificial, quickly succumbed. 
And now, even in the land of its birth, it has entirely 
perished; on the one side a deeper faith, on the other a 
more rampant unbelief, have encroached on, and wholly 
swallowed up, the territory which it occupied for a while. 
It is indeed so little the form in which an assault on 
Revelation will ever again clothe itself, and may be so 
entirely regarded as one of the cast-off garments of 
unbelief, now despised and trodden under foot even of 
those who once glorified themselves in it, that I have not 
alluded, save very slightly and passingly, to it in the body 
of my book. Once or twice I have noticed it's curiosities 
of interpretation, its substitutions, as they have been 
happily termed, of philological for historical wonders. The 
reader who is curious to see how Dr. Paulus and his com¬ 
peers arrived at the desired result of exhausting the 
narrative of its miraculous element, will find specimens in 
the notes upon The feeding of the five thousand, and The 
stater in the fisVs mouth. 

7. The Historico-Ceitical. (Woolstoh, Strauss.) 

The latest assault upon the miracles may not unfitly be 
termed the historico-critical. It declares that the records 
of them are so full of contradictions, psychological and 
other improbabilities, discrepancies between the account 
of one Evangelist and another, that upon close handling 
they crumble to pieces, and are unable to maintain their 
ground as history. Among the English Deists of the last 


86 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES. 


century, Woolston especially addressed himself in this way 
to the undermining the historic credit of these narratives. 
He was brought to this evil work in a singular way, and 
abides a mournful example of the extremes to which spite 
and mortified vanity may carry a weak man, though, as 
all testimonies concur in acknowledging, at one time of 
estimable conversation, and favourably known for his 
temperate life, his charity to the poor, and other evidences 
of an inward piety. Born in 1669, and educated at Cam¬ 
bridge, where he became a fellow of Sidney, he first 
attracted unfavourable notice by a certain crack-brained 
enthusiasm for the allegorical interpretation of Scripture, 
which he carried to all lengths. Whether he owed this 
bias to the works of Philo and Origen, or only strengthened 
and nourished an already existing . predilection by the 
study of their writings, is not exactly clear; but it became 
a sort of ^ fixed idea ’ in his mind. At first, although just 
ofi’ence was taken at more than one publication of his, in 
which his allegorical system was carried out at the expense 
apparently of the historic truth of the Scripture, yet, as it 
was not considered that he meant any mischief, as it was 
not likely that he would exert any very wide infiuence, he 
was suffered to follow his own way, unvisited by any 
serious censures from the higher authorities of the Church. 
Meeting, however, with opposition in many quarters, and 
unable to carry the clergy with him, he broke out at last 
in unmeasured invectives against them, and in a virulent 
pamphlet^ styled them ‘ slaves of the letter,’ ^ Baal-priests,’ 
‘blind leaders of the blind,’ and the like, and was on 
account of this pamphlet deprived of his fellowship (1721). 

Prom this time it seemed as if an absolute fury possessed 
him. Hot merely the Church, but Christianity itself, was 
the object of his attack. Whether his allegorical system 

* In hia Letter to the Rev. Dr. Bennett upon this question, Whether the 
Quakers do not the nearest of any other sect resemble the primitive Christiam 
in principle andprcetices. By Aristobulus. London, 1720. 


THE ASSAULTS OH THE MIRACLES. 87 

of interpretation had indeed ended, as it was very likely to 
end, in depriving him of all faith in God’s Word, and he 
professed to retain his veneration for its spiritual meaning, 
only that he might, under shelter of that, more securely 
advance to the assault of its historical foundations, or 
whether he did still retain this in truth, it was now at any 
rate only subordinate to his purposes of revenge. To 
these he was ready to offer up every other consideration. 
When, then, in that great controversy which was raging 
in the early part of the last century, the defenders of re¬ 
vealed religion entrenched themselves behind the miracles, 
as defences from which they could never be driven, as 
irrefragable proofs of the divine origin of Christianity, 
Woolston undertook, by the engines of his allegorical 
interpretation, to dislodge them from these also, and with 
this view published his notorious Letters on the Miracles.^ 

^ These six Letters, first published as separate pamphlets between 
1727-29, had an immense circulation, and were read with the greatest 
avidity. Voltaire, who was in England just at the time of their publi¬ 
cation, says that thirty thousand copies were sold, and that large packets 
were forwarded to the American colonies. In the copy I am using, the 
different letters range from the third to the sixth edition, and this almost 
immediately after their first publication. Swift, in his lines on his own 
death, written 1731, quite consents with Voltaire’s account of the im¬ 
mense popularity which they enjoyed; and makes Lintot, the bookseller, 

say,— _ , . 

‘ Here’s 'VVoolston’s tracts, the twelfth edition, 

’Tis read by every policitian: 

The country members when in town 
To all their boroughs send them down; 

You never met a thing so smart ; 

The courtiers have them all by heart; ’ &c. 

Their circulation was so great, and their mischief so wide, that above 
sixty answers were published within a very short period. Gibson, then 
Bishop of London, addressed five pastoral letters to his diocese against 
them; and other chief divines of England, as Sherlock, Pearce, Small- 
brooke, found it needful to answer them. Of the replies which I have 
seen, Smallbrooke’s (Bishop of St. David’s) Vindication of our Saviour's 
Miracles, 1729, is the most learned and the best. But one cannot help 
being painfully struck upon this and other occasions with the poverty 
and feebleness of the anti-deistical literature of England in that day of 
need; the low grounds which it occupies; the little enthusiasm which 


88 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES, 


It is his manner in these to take certain miracles which 
Christ did, or which were wrought in relation of Him, two 
or three in a letter; he then seeks to show that, understood 
in their literal sense, they are stuffed so full with extrava¬ 
gances, contradictions, absurdities, that no reasonable man 
can suppose Christ actually to have wrought them; while 
as little could the Evangelists, as honest men, men who had 
the credit of their Lord at heart, have intended to record 
them as actually wrought, or desired us to receive them as 
other than allegories, spiritual truths clothed in the garb 
of historic events. The enormous difference between him¬ 
self and those early Church writers, to whom he appeals, 
and whose views he professes to be only re-asserting,—a 
difference of which it is impossible that he could have 
been ignorant,—is this : they said. This history, being 
real, has also a deeper ideal sense ; he upon the contrary. 
Since it is impossible that this history can be real, therefore 
it must have a spiritual significance. They build upon the 
establishment of the historic sense, he upon its ruins.^ 

When he desires to utter grosser blasphemies than in 
his own person he dares, or than would befit the position 

the cause awakened in its defenders. The paltry shifts witH whick 
Woolston sought to evade the consequences of his blasphemy,—and there 
is an infinite meanness in the way in which he professes, while blas¬ 
pheming against the works of Christ, to be only assailing them in the 
letter that he may vindicate them in the spirit,—failed to protect him 
from the pains and penalties of the law. He was fined twenty-five 
pounds for each of his Letters, sentenced to be imprisoned for a year, 
and was not to be released till he could find sureties for his good 
behaviour. These he was unable to procure, and died in prison in 

1731- 

1 Their canon was ever this of Gregory the Great {Horn. xl. in Eoang .'): 
Tunc namque allegorioe fructus suaviter carpitur, cum prius per histo- 
riam in veritatis radice solidatur j and they abound in such earnest warn¬ 
ings as this of Augustine’s: Ante omnia tamen, fratres, hoc in nomine 
Dei admonemus, ut quando auditis exponi Sacras Scripturas narrantes 
quse gesta sunt, prius illud quod lectum est credatis sic gestum quomodo 
lectum est, ne subtracto fundamento rei gestas, quasi in aere quceretis 
sedificare. Compare what he says on the history of Jonah, Ep. cii. qu. 

vi. 33. 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MITtACLES. 89 

wliicli lie lias assumed from whence to assault Revelation, 
lie introduces a Jewish Rabbi, and suffers him to speak 
without restraint, himself only observing, ‘ This is what 
an adversary might say; to these accusations we Christians 
expose ourselves, so long as we cleave to the historic 
letter; we only can evade their force by forsaking that, 
and holding fast the allegorical meaning alone.’ I shall 
not (as it is not needful) offend the Christian reader by 
the reproduction of any of his coarser ribaldry, which has 
sufficient cleverness to have proved mischievous enough; 
but will show by a single example the manner in which he 
seeks to make weak points in the Scripture narratives. 
He is dealing with the miracle of the man sick of the 
palsy, vfho was let through the broken roof of the house 
where Jesus was, and thereupon healed (Mark ii. 1-12). 
But how, he demands, should there have been such a 
crowd to hear Jesus preach at Capernaum, where He was 
so well known, and so little admired ? And then, if there 
was that crowd, what need of such urgent haste ? it was 
but waiting an hour or two, and the multitude would have 
dispersed; ‘ I should have thought their faith might have 
worked patience.’ Why did not Jesus tell the people to 
make way? would they not have done so readily, since a 
miracle was the very thing they wanted to see ? How 
should the pulleys, ropes, and ladder have been at hand to 
haul the sick man up ? How strange that they should 
have had hatchets and other tools ready at hand, to break 
through the spars and rafters of the roof; and stranger 
still, that the good man of the house should have endured, 
without a remonstrance, his property to be so injured! 
How did those below escape without hurt from the falling 
tiles and plaster? And if there were a door in the roof, 
as some, to mitigate the difficulty, tell us, why did not 
Jesus go up to the roof, and there speak the healing word, 
and so spare all this trouble and damage and danger ? 

But enotigh;—it is evident that this style of objection 


90 TEE ASSAULTS ON THE MIUACLES. 


could be infinitely multiplied. There is always in every 
story something else that might have happened besides 
the thing that did happen. It is after this taking to 
pieces of the narrative, this triumphant showing, as he 
affirms, that it cannot stand in the letter, that he proceeds, 
as a sort of salvo, to say it may very well stand in its 
spirit, as an allegory and symbol of something else; and 
that so, and so only, it was intended. This is what he 
offers by way of this higher meaning in the present case : 
By the palsy of this man is signified ‘ a dissoluteness of 
morals and unsteadiness of faith and principles, which is 
the condition of mankind at present, who want Jesus’ help 
for the cure of it.’ The four bearers are the four Evan¬ 
gelists, ‘ on whose faith and doctrine mankind is to be 
carried unto Christ.’ The house to the top of which he is 
to be carried is ^the intellectual edifice of the world, 
otherwise called Wisdom’s house.’ But ‘ to the sublime 
sense of the Scriptures, called the top of the house, is man 
to be taken; he is not to abide in the low and literal 
sense of them.’ Then if he dare to ‘ open the house of 
wisdom, he will presently be admitted to the presence and 
knowledge of Jesus.’ ^ 


^ Fourth Discourse on the Miracles, pp, Strauss’s own judg¬ 

ment of his predecessor in this line very much agrees with that given 
above. He says, ‘ Woolston’s whole presentation of the case veers 
between these alternatives. If we are determined to hold fast the 
miracles as actual history, then they forfeit all divine character, and 
sink down into unworthy tricks and common frauds. Do we refuse, on 
the other hand, to let go the divine in these narratives, then must we, 
with the sacrifice of their historic character, understand them only as 
the setting forth, in historic guise, of certain spiritual truths; for which, 
indeed, the authority of the chiefest allegorists in the Church, as Origen 
and Augustine and others, may be adducedyet so, that Woolston im¬ 
putes falsely to them the intention of thrusting out, as he would do, the 
literal interpretation by the allegorical altogether; when indeed they, a 
few instances on Origen’s part being excepted, are inclined to let both 
explanations stand, the one beside the other. Woolston’s statement of 
the case may leave a doubt to which of the two alternatives that he sets 
over against one another, he with his own judgment inclines. If one 
calls to mind, that before he came forward as an opponent of Christianity 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES. 


9 ^ 


Not very different is Stranss’s own method of proceeding. 
He wields the same weapons of destructive criticism, 
thinking to show how each history will crumble at his 
touch, resolve into a heap of improbabilities, which no one 
can any longer maintain. It needs not to say that he is 
a more accomplished adversary than Woolston, with far 
ampler resources at command,—more, if not of his own, 
yet of other men’s learning; inheriting as he does all the 
negative criticism of the last hundred years, of an epoch, 
that is, which has been sufficiently fruitful in this kind. 
Here indeed is in great part the secret of the vast 
sensation which his work for a season produced. All that 
was scattered up and down in many books he has brought 
together and gathered into a single focus. What other 
men had spoken faintly and with reserve, he has spoken 
out; has been bold to give utterance to alb which was 
trembling upon the lips of numbers, but which, from one 
cause or another, they had shrunk from openly avowing. 
At the same time in the treatment of the miracles,—for 
with that only we have now to do,—there are differences 
between him and Woolston. He unites in his own person 
the philosophical and the critical assailant of these. He 
starts from the philosophic ground of Spinoza, that the 
miracle is impossible, since the laws of nature are the only 
and the necessary laws of God and of his manifestation; 
and he then proceeds to the critical examination of the 
evangelical miracles in detail; but of course in each case 

as received in his day, he occupied himself with allegorical interpretations 
of the Scripture, one might regard this as the opinion which was most 
truly his own. But, on the other hand, all that he can adduce of incon¬ 
gruities in the literal sense of the miracle histories is brought forward 
with such one-sided zeal, and so colours the whole with its mocking 
tone, that one must rather conjecture that the Deist seeks only, by 
urging the allegorical sense, to secure his own rear, that so he may the 
more boldly let himself loose on the literal meaning’ {Lchen Jesu, 3d 
edit. vol. i. p. 14). There is a very accurate and carefully written account 
of Woolston, and his life and writings, in Lechler, Geschichte 4 es Bag* 
lischen Heismus, pp. 289-311. 

6 


92 


THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES. 


to the trial of that which is already implicitly tried and 
condemned. Thus, if he is ever at a loss, if any of them 
give him trouble, if they oppose a too stubborn resistance 
to the powerful solvents which he applies, threatening to 
stand in despite of all, he immediately falls back on his 
philosophic ground, and exclaims, ‘ But if we admit il was 
thus, then we should have here a miracle, and we have 
started from the first principle, that such is inconceivable.’ 
This mockery in every case he repeats, trying them one by 
one, which have all been condemned by him beforehand 
in the gross. 

There is, too, this further difference, that while Woolston 
professed to consider the miracles as the conscious clothing 
of spiritual truth, allegories devised artificially, and, so to 
speak, in cold blood, for the setting forth of the truths 
of the kingdom, Strauss gives them a freer birth and a 
somewhat nobler origin. They are the halo of glory with 
which the Infant Church gradually and without any 
purposes of deceit clothed its Bounder and Head. His 
mighty personality, of which it was livingly conscious, 
caused it ever to surround Him with new attributes of 
glory. All that men had ever craved and longed for— 
deliverance from physical evil, dominion over the crushing 
powers of nature, victory over death itself,—all that had 
ever in a lesser measure been attributed to any other,— 
they lent in larger abundance, in unrestrained fulness, to 
Him whom they felt greater than all. The Church in fact 
made its Christ, and not Christ his Church.* 

With one only observation I will pass on, not detaining 
the reader any longer from more pleasant and more pro¬ 
fitable portions of the subject. It is this,—that here, as 
so often, we find the longings and cravings of men after a 
redemption, in the widest sense of that word, made to 
throw suspicion upon Him in whom these longings and 

' See tlie very remarkable chapter, anticipating- so much of modern 
speculation on this subject, in Augustine, He Civ. Dei, xxii. 6. 


THE ASSAULTS OH THE- MIRACLES, 


93 


cravings are affirmed to have been satisfied. But if we 
believe a divine life stirring at the root of our humanity, 
the. depth and universality of such longings is a proof 
rather that they were meant some day to find their satis¬ 
faction, and not always to be mere hopes and dreams; 
and if so, in whom, but in Him whom we preach and 
believe—in whom, but in Christ? What other beside 
Him could, with the slightest show of reason, be put 
forward as a fulfiUer of the world’s hopes, the realizer of 
the world’s dreams ? If we do not believe in this divine 
life, nor in a divine leading of our race, if we hold a mere 
brutal theory about man, it were then better altogether to 
leave discussing miracles and Gospels, which indeed have 
no meaning for, as they can stand in no relation to, us. 


CHAPTER VI. 


TUB APOLOGETIC WORTH OF THE MIRACLES. 
MOST interesting question remains; What place 



AL should they who are occupied with marshalling and 
presenting the evidences of Revelation ascribe to the 
miracles ? what is the service which they may render 
here? The circumstances have been already noticed 
which hindered them from taking a very prominent place 
in the early apologies for the faith.^ The Christian mira¬ 
cles had not as yet sufficiently extricated themselves from 
the multitude of false miracles, nor was Christ sufficiently 
discerned and distinguished from the various wonder¬ 
workers of his own and of past ages; and thus, even if 
men had admitted his miracles to be true and godlike, 
they would have been hardly nearer to the acknowledging 
of Christianity as the one faith, or to the accepting of 
Christ as ^ the way, the truth, and the life.’ 

A far more prominent position has been assigned them 
in later times, especially during the last two centuries; 
and the tone and temper of modern theology abundantly 
explains the greater, sometimes, I believe, the undue, 
because the exclusive, prominence, which in this period 

^ Thus, in the Apologies of Justin Martyr, they are scarcely made use 
of at all. It is otherwise indeed with Arnohius, who (Adv. Gen. i. 42) 
lays much stress on them. Speaking of the truth of Christianity and 
of Christ’s mission, he says. Nulla major est comprohatio quam gestarum 
ab eo fides rerum, quam virtutum,—and then appeals through ten elo¬ 
quent chapters to his miracles. 


APOLOGETIC WORTH OF THE MIRACLES. 95 

they have assumed. The apologetic literature of this time 
partook, as was inevitable, in the general depression of 
all its theology. 'No one, I think, would now be satisfied 
with the general tone and spirit in which the defences of 
the faith, written during the last two centuries, and begin¬ 
ning with the memorable work of Grotius,^ are composed. 
Much as this book and others of the same character con¬ 
tain of admirable, yet in well nigh all that great truth of 
the Italian poet seems to have been forgotten, 

^ They struggle vainly to preserve a part, 

Who have not courage to contend for all.’ 

These apologists seem very often to have thought that 
Deism would best be resisted by reducing Christianity to 
a sort of revealed Deism. As men that had renounced 
the hope of defending all, their whole endeavour was to 
save something; and when their pursuers pressed them 
hard, they were willing to delay the pursuit by casting to 
these much that should have been far dearer‘to them than 
to be sacrificed thus. They have been well compared to 
men, who should cry ^ Thieves and robbers ! ’ and were yet 
themselves all the while throwing out of the windows the 
most precious things of the house. And thus it some¬ 
times happened that the good cause suffered quite as much 
from its defenders as its assailants : for that enemies should 
be fierce and bitter, this was only to be looked for; but 
that friends, those in whose keeping was the citadel, should 
be timid and half-hearted and ready for a compromise, if 
not for a surrender, was indeed an augury of ill. Now 
this, which caused so much to be thrown greatly out of 
sight, as generally the deeper mysteries of our faith, which 
brought about a slight of the inner arguments for the 
truth of revelation, caused the argument from the miracles 
to assume a disproportionate importance. A value too 
exclusive was set on them; they were rent away from the 

' He Veritaie Reh'gionis Chmtiance, 


THE APOLOGETIC 


96 

trutlis for whicli they witnessed, and wliicli witnessed 
for them,—only too mucli like seals tom off from the 
document which at once they rendered valid, and which 
in return gave importance to them. And thus, in this 
unnatural isolation, separated from Christ’s person and 
doctrine, the whole burden of proof was laid on them. They 
were the apology for Christianity, the reason men should 
give for the faith which was in them.^ 

It is not hard to see the motives which led to this. Men 
wanted an absolute demonstration of the Christian faith,— 
one which, objectively, should be equally good for every 
man: they desired to bring the matter to the same sort of 
proof as exists for a problem in mathematics or a propo¬ 
sition in logic. And consistently with this we see the 
whole argument cast exactly into the same forms of defi¬ 
nitions, postulates, axioms, and propositions.^ Yet the 
state of mind which made men desire either to find for 
themselves, or to furnish for others, proofs of this nature, 
was not altogether a healthy one. It was plain that their 
faith had become very much an external historic one, who 
thus eagerly looked round for outward evidences, and found 
a value only in such; instead of turning in upon them¬ 
selves as well, for evidence that they had ^not followed 
cunningly devised fables,’ and saying. ‘ We lcnow the things 
which we believe,—they are to us truer than aught else 
can be, for we have the witness of the Spirit for their truth. 

1 I include, in the proofs drawn from the miracles, those drawn from 
the Old-Testament prophecies,—for it was only as miracles (miracula 
pr^scientise, as the others are miracula potentiae) that these prophecies 
were made to do service and arrayed in the forefront of this battle; as 
by the learned and acute Huet, in his Demonstratio Evangelica, in which 
the fulfilment of prophecy in the person of Jesus of Nazareth is altoge¬ 
ther the point round which the whole argument turns, as he himself in 
the Preface, § 2, declares. 

^ For example, by Huet in his work referred to above. He claims for 
the way of proof upon which he is entering that it is the safest, and has 
the precision, and carries the conviction, of a geometrical proof (Prrt/a4/o, 
§ 2): Utpote quse constet hoc genere demonstrationis, quod non minus 
certum sit quam demonstratio qufovis geometrica. 


woutii of the miracles. 


97 


We have found these things to be true, for they have come 
to us in demonstration of the Spirit and in power.’ In 
place of such an appeal to those mighty influences which 
Christ’s words and doctrine exercise on every heart that 
receives them, to their transforming, transfiguring power, 
to the miracles of grace which are the heritage of every 
one who has believed to salvation, in place of urging on 
the gainsayers in the very language of the Lord, ‘ If any 
man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine whether 
it be of God’ (John vii. 17), this all has vague and my¬ 
stical (instead of being seen to be, as it truly was, the most 
sure and certain of all) was thrown into the background. 
Men were afraid to trust themselves and their cause to 
evidences like these, and would know of no other state¬ 
ment of the case than this barren and hungry one:— 
Christianity is a divine revelation, and this the miracles 
which accompanied its promulgation prove. 

What must first be found fault with here is the wilful 
abandonment of such large regions of proof, which the 
Christian apologist ought triumphantly to have occupied 
as his proper domain—the whole region, mainly and chiefly, 
of the inner spiritual life ; the foregoing of any appeal to 
the mysterious powers of regeneration and renewal, which 
are ever found to follow upon a true afliance on Him who 
is the Giver of this faith, and who has pledged Himself to 
these very results in those who rightly receive it. 

To these proofs he might at least have ventured an 
appeal, when seeking not to convince an unbeliever, but, 
as would be often his aim, to carry one that already be 
lieved round the whole circle of the defences of his position, 
to make him aware of the relative strength of each, to 
give him a scientific insight into the grounds on which his 
faith rested. Here, at any rate, the appeal to what he 
had himself known and tasted of the powers of the world 
to come, might well have found room. For, to use the 


98 THE APOLOGETIC 

words of Coleridge,* ‘ Is not a true, efficient conviction of 
a moral trntli, is not the creating of a new heart, wliicli 
collects the energies of a man’s whole being in the focus 
of the conscience, the one essential miracle, the same and 
of the same evidence to the ignorant and to the learned, 
which no superior skill can counterfeit, human or demo¬ 
niacal ; is it not emphatically that leading of the Father, 
without which no man can come to Christ; is it not that 
implication of doctrine in the miracle, and of miracle in 
the doctrine, which is the bridge of communication be¬ 
tween the senses and the soul;—that predisposing warmth 
which renders the understanding susceptible of the specific 
impressions from the history, and from all other outward 
seals of testimony ? ’ And even were the argument with 
one who had never submitted himself to these blessed 
powers, and to whose experience therefore no like appeal 
could be made, yet even for him there is the outward utter¬ 
ance of this inward truth, in that which he could not deny, 
save as he denied or was ignorant of everything, which 
would make him one to be argued with at all,—the stand¬ 
ing miracle, I mean, of a Christendom ^ commensurate and 
almost synonymous with the civilized world,’—the mighty 
changes which this religion of Christ has wrought in the 
earth,—the divine fruits which it everywhere has borne,— 
the new creation which it has everywhere brought about,— 
the way in which it has taken its place in the world, not 
as a forcible intruder, but finding all that world’s preestab¬ 
lished harmonies ready to greet and welcome it, to give it 
play and room,—philosophy, and art, and science practi 
caUy confessing that only under it could they attain their 
highest perfection, that in something they had all been 
dwarfed and stunted and incomplete till it came. Little 
as it wears of the glory which it ought, yet it wears enough 
to proclaim that its origin was more than mundane. Surely 
from a Christendom, even such as it shows itself now^ it ia 
' The Friend, yoI. iii. Essay ii. 


WORTH OF THE MIRACLES. 


99 


fair to argue back to a Christ suck as the Church receives 
as, the only adequate cause. It is an oak which from no 
other acorji could have unfolded itself into so tall and 
stately a tree. 

[t is true that in this there is an abandoning of the at¬ 
tempt to put the proof of Christianity into the same form 
as that of a proposition in an exact science. There is no 
more the claim made of giving it that kind of certainty. 
But this, which may seem at first sight a loss, is indeed a 
gain; for the argument for all which as Christians we be¬ 
lieve, is in very truth not logical and single, but moral and 
cumulative; and the attempt to substitute a formal proof, 
where the deepest necessities of the soul demand a moral, 
is one of the most grievous shocks which the moral sense 
can receive, as it is also a most fruitful source of unbelief. 
Few in whose hands books of Evidences constructed on 
this scheme have fallen, but must painfully remember the 
shock which they suffered from their perusal,—how it took 
them, it may be, some time to recover the healthy tone of 
their minds, and confidence of their faith; and how, only 
by falling’ back upon what they themselves had felt and 
known of the living power of Christ’s words and doctrine 
in their own hearts, could they deliver themselves from 
the injurious influences, the seeds of doubt and misgiving, 
which these books had now, for the first time perhaps, sown 
in their minds. They must remember how they asked 
themselves, in deep inner trouble of soul: ^ Are these in¬ 
deed the grounds, and the only grounds, upon which the 
deep foundations of my spiritual life repose? is this all 
that I have to answer ? are these, and no more, the reasons 
of the faith that is in me ? ’ And then, if at any moment 
there arose a suspicion that some link in this chain of out¬ 
ward proof was wanting, or was too weak to bear ail the 
weight which was laid upon it,—and men will be con¬ 
tinually tempted to try the strength of that to which they 
have trusted all,— there was nothing to fall back upon, with 


100 


THE APOLOGETIC 


vvliicli to scatter and pnt to fliglit suspicions and misgivings 
sucli as these. And that such should arise, at least in 
many minds, is inevitable; for how many points, as we 
have seen, are there at which a suspicion may intrude. Is 
a miracle possible? Is a miracle provable? Were the 
witnesses of these miracles competent ? Did they not too 
lightly admit a supernatural cause, when there were ade¬ 
quate natural ones which they failed to note ? These works 
may have been good for the eye-witnesses, but what are 
they for me ? Does a miracle, admitting it to be a real 
one, authenticate the teaching of him who has wrought it ? 
And these doubts and questionings might be multiplied 
without number. Happy is the man, and he only is happy, 
who, if the outworks of his faith are at any time thus 
assailed, can betake himself to an impregnable inner cita¬ 
del, from whence in due time to issue forth and repossess 
even those exterior defences, who can fall back on those 
inner grounds of belief, in which there can be no mistake, 
the testimony of' the Spirit, which is above and better 
than all.* 

And as it is thus with him, who entirely desiring to be¬ 
lieve, is only unwillingly disturbed with doubts and sugges¬ 
tions, which he would give worlds to be rid of for ever, so 
not less the expectation that ^ by arguments thrown into 
strict syllogistic forms there is any compelling to the faith 
one who does not wish to believe, is absurd, and an expec¬ 
tation which all experience contradicts. All that he is, 
and all that he is determined to be, has pledged him to an 
opposite conclusion. Eather than believe that a miracle 
has taken place, a miracle from the upper world, and con¬ 
nected with precepts of holiness, to which precepts he is 
resolved to yield no obedience, he will take refuge in any 
the most monstrous supposition of fraud, or ignorance, or 
folly, or collusion. If no such solution presents itself, he 

^ See tlie admirable words of Calvin, Instit. i. 7, §§ 4, 5, on tbe Holy 
Scripture as ultimately avroinaToc:. 


WORTH OF THE MIRACLES. 


101 


will wait for sucli, ratlier than accept the miracle, with the 
hated adjunct of the truth which it confirms. In what 
different ways the same miracle of Christ wrought upon 
different spectators! He raised a man from the dead; 
here was the same outward fact for all; but how diverse 
the effects !—some believed, and some went and told the 
Pharisees (John xi. 45, 46). Heavenly voices were heard. 
—and some said it thundered, so dull and inarticulate 
were those sounds to them, while others knew that they 
were voices wherein was the witness of the Father to his 
own Son (John xii. 28-30). 

Are then, it may be asked, the miracles to occupy no 
place at all in the array of proofs for the certainty of the 
things which we have believed ? So far from this, a most 
important place. Our loss would be irreparable, if they 
did not appear in sacred history, if we could not point to 
them there. It is not too much to say that their absence 
would be fatal. There are indeed two miracles, those of 
the Conception and of the Eesurrection, round which the 
whole scheme of redemption revolves, and without which 
it would cease to be such at all. But we are speaking 
here not of miracles whereof Christ was the subject, but 
of those which He wrought; and of them too we affirm that 
they belong to the very idea of a Eedeemer, which would 
remain altogether incomplete without them. They are 
not, as Lessing declared, a part of the scaffolding of 
revelation, which as such yielded a temporary service; 
but which, now that the house is finished and stands 
without them, retain no further significance; and cannot 
be considered binding on any man’s faith. They are 
rather a constitutive element of the revelation of God 
in Christ. We could not conceive of Him as not doing 
such works; and those to whom we presented Him as 
Lord and Saviour might very well answer, ^ Strange, that 
one should come to deliver men from the bondage of nature 


102 


THE APOLOGETIC 


wliicli was crusliing tlieirij and jet Himself have been 
subject to its heaviest laws,—Himself wonderful, and jet 
his appearance accompanied bj no analogous wonders in 
nature,—claiming to be the Life, and jet Himself helpless 
in the encounter with deadh; however much He promised 
in word, never realizing anj part of his promises in deed; 
giving nothing in hand, no first-fruits of power, no pledges 
of greater things to come.’ Thej would have a right to 
ask, ^ Whj did He give no signs that He came to connect 
the visible with the invisible world ? whj did He nothing 
to break tbe joke of custom and experience, nothing to 
show men that the constitution which He pretended to 
reveal has a true foundation ? ’ ^ And who w'ould not feel 
that thej had reason in this, that a Saviour who «‘o bore 
Himself during his earthlj life, and his actual dailj en¬ 
counter with evil, would bring into question, naj, would 
forfeit his right to this name ? that He must needs show 
Himself, if He were to meet the wants of men, mightj not 
onlj in word but in work ? claiming more than a man’s 
authoritj that He should have displajed more than a man’s 
power ? * 

When we object to the use often made of these works. 


^ Maurice, The Kingdom of Christ, vol. ii. p. 264. Compare Delitzsch 
{Apologetik, 1869, p. 9): Die Erlosuug lioii; auf zu sein was sie bibliscbem 
Begriffe nach ist, wenn sie nicbt, sowobl objectiv als aneignungsweise, 
sich als iibernatiirlicbe scbopferiscbe Setzung eines neuen Anlangs inner- 
halb der alten Welt der Siinde und des Todes, also als wunderbare Durcb- 
biecbung der natiirlicben Eutwickeliing, erweist. Nimmt man also 
das Wunder aus dem Cbristbentbume binweg, so fiillt das gauze Gebaude 
zusammen, und es bleibt nicbts ubrig als eine durcb Sage, Mjthus und 
dogmatiscbe Ueberspannung entstelite und, wenn auf ibren wabren Tbat- 
bestand zurucbgebracbt, mit natiirlicbem Mitteln zu begreifende cultur- 
gescbicbtlicbe Erscbeinung innerbalb des mit der Griindricbtung auf das 
Religiose ausgestatteteii seinitiscben Vdlkerstamnies. 

^ It was tbe weakness of Mahomet, and it is plain from many utter¬ 
ances of his, that he constantly felt it as such, that he could shew no 
miracles with which to altest his mission as divine. It is true that in a 
measure he won acceptance for himself and his teaching without them ; 
but he did this by flinging the sword, where Christ had flung the cross, 
into the scale. 


WORTH OF THE MIRACLES. 


103 


it is only because tbey bave been forcibly severed from the 
whole complex of Christ’s life and doctrine, and presented 
to the contemplation of men apart from these; it is only 
because, when on his head are ‘ many crowns ’ (Eev. xix. 
12), one only has been singled out in proof that He is 
King of kings and Lord of lords. The miracles have been 
spoken of as though they borrowed nothing from the 
truths which they confirmed, but those truths^everything 
from the miracles by which they were confirmed; when, 
indeed, the true relation is one of mutual interdependence, 
the miracles proving the doctrines, and the doctrines 
approving the miracles,^ and both held together for us in 
a blessed unity, in the person of Him who spake the 
words and did the works, and through the impress of 
highest holiness and of absolute truth and goodness, which 
that person leaves stamped on our souls ;—so that it may 
be more truly said that we believe the miracles for Christ’s 
sake, than Christ for the miracles’ sake.^ Neither when 
we thus affirm that the miracles prove the doctrine, and 
the doctrine the miracles, are we arguing in a circle: 
rather we are receiving the sum total of the impression 
which this divine revelation is intended to make on us, 
instead of taking an impression only partial and one-sided. 


^ See Pascal, Pensees, 27, Sur les Miracles. 

2 Augustine was indeed affirming the same, when, against the Dona- 
tists, and their claims to be workers of wonders, ho said {De Unit. Eccles. 
19): Qumcimque talia in Catholica [Ecclesia] fiunt, ideo sunt appro- 
banda, quia in Catholica fiunt; non ideo manifestatur Catholica, ouia 
heec in ea fiunt. 



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THE MIRACLES 


1 , THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 

JoHif ii. I-II. 

^ fJlRI 8 beginning of miracles ’ is as truly an introduction 
to all otlier miracles wHcL. Christ did, as the parable 
of the Sower to all other parables which he spoke (Mark 
iv. 13). No other miracle has so much of prophesy in it; 
no other, therefore, would have inaugurated so fitly the 
whole future work of the Son of God. !Por that work 
might be characterized throughout as an ennobling of the 
common, and a transmuting of the mean; a turning of the 
water of earth into the wine of heaven. But it will be 
better not to anticipate remarks, which will find thrir 
fitter place when the miracle itself shall have been con¬ 
sidered. 

^ And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of 
Galilee ’—on the third day, no doubt, after that on which 
Philip and Nathanael, as is mentioned just before (i. 43), 
had attached themselves to Christ. He and his newly-won 
disciples, of whom one was a native of Cana (see xxi. 2), 
would have journeyed without difficulty from the banks of 
Jordan to Cana' in two days, and might so have been 

^ Among the happiest of Robinson’s slighter rectifications of the geo¬ 
graphy of Palestine (Biblical Researches^ yol. iii. pp. 204-208), although 
one which is still hy some called in doubt (see the Diet, of the Bible, 
B. V. Cana), in his reinstatement of the true Cana in honours long usurped 
by another village. In the neighbourhood of Nazareth are two villages. 


io6 THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 

present at tlie ‘ marriage,^ or marriage festival, upon tlie 
third day after. ^ And the mother of Jesus was therel ‘The 
silence of Scripture leaves hardly a doubt that Joseph was 
dead before Christ’s open ministry began. He is last ex¬ 
pressly mentioned on occasion of the Lord’s visit as a child 
to the Temple (Luke ii, 41); which, however, he must for 
a certain period have overlived (ver. 51). ^ And both Jesus 

was called and his discijples.* These, invited with their 
Master, and, no doubt, mainly to do honour to their 
Master, m all likelihood are not the Twelve, but only those 
five whose calling has just before been recorded, Andrew 
and Peter, Philip and Hathanael (Bartholomew?), and the 
fifth, probably the Evangelist himself; who will thus have 
been an eye-witness of the miracle which he relates.^ 

one Kefr Kenna, about an hour and a half N.E. from Nazareth; the 
other, Kana el-Jelil, about three hours’ distance, and nearly due north. 
The former is now always shown to travellers as the Cana of our history, 
though the name can only with difficulty be twisted to the same, the 
‘ Kefr ’ having first to be dropped altogether, and in Kenna, the first 
radical changed, and the second left out; while ^Kana el-Jelil’ is word 
for word the ‘ Cana of Galilee ’ of Scripture, which exactly so stands in 
the Arabic version of the New Testament. The mistake, as he shows, 
is entirely modern, only since the sixteenth century Kefr Kenna having 
thus borne away the honours due rightly to Kana el-Jelil. Till then, as 
a long line of earlier travellers and topographers attest, the latter was 
ever considered as the scene of this miracle. It may have helped to win 
for the mistake an easier acceptance, that it was manifestlv for the 
interest of guides and travellers who would spare themselves fatigue and 
distance, to accept the other in its room, it lying directly on one of the 
routes between Nazareth and Tiberias, and being far more accessible 
than the true. The Cana of the New Testament does not occur in the 
Old, but is mentioned twice by Josephus ( Vit. §§ 16, 64; Rell. Jud. i. 17, 
5). The Old Testament has only Kanah in Asher (Josh. xix. 28), S.E. 
of Tyre. 

^ A late tradition adopted by the Mahometans (D’llerbelot, Bihlioth. 
Orient, s. v. Johannes), makes St. John himself the bridegroom at this 
marriage; who, beholding the miracle which Jesus wrought, forsook the 
bride, and followed Him. Thus the Prologue to St. John, attributed to 
Jerome (Joannem nubere volentem a nuptiis per Dominum fuisse voca- 
tum), but with no closer reference to this miracle. According to Nice- 
phorus it was not St. John, but Simon the Canaanite, who on this hint 
followed Jesus; but KavavirriQ attached to his name (Matt. x. 4), and 
probably the only foundation for this assumption, does not mean ‘of 
Cana;’ anymore than it means ‘of Canaan;’ which our Translators 


THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 107 

Him, as was seen long ago, we may pretty confidently 
recognize in the second bnt nnnamed disciple, whom the 
Baptist detached from himself, that he might attach him 
to the Lord (John i. 35, 40). It is in St. John’s favourite 
manner to preserve an incognito of this kind (cf. xiii. 23; 
xviii. 15; xix. 26, 35), thus seeking to draw away all 
attention from himself the teller, and fix it on the events 
which he is telling. ■ 

None need wonder to find the Lord of life at this festival; 
for He came to sanctify all life,—to consecrate its times of 
joy, as its times of sorrow; the former, as all experience 
teaches, needing above all such a consecration as only his 
presence, bodily or spiritual, can give. He was there, 
and by his presence there struck the key-note to the whole 
tenor of his future ministry. He should not be as another 
Baptist, a wilderness preacher, withdrawing himself from 
the common paths of men. His should be at once a harder 
and a higher task, to mingle with and purify the daily life 
of men, to bring out the glory which was everywhere 
hidden there.^ How precious is his witness here against 
an indolent and cowardly readiness to give up to the 
world, or to the devil, aught which, in itself innocent, is 


writing Hlie Canaanite,’ as thougli 'K.avavXrrii^—Xavavcw'ic^ must liave 
assumed. It is rather a term equivalent to the title given him 

elsewhere (Luke vi. 15; Acts i. 13); see, however, on this point Greswell 
{^Dissert, vol. ii. p. 128 sqq.). Once a ‘ zealot/ his zeal for freedom, which 
had then displayed itself in stormy outbreaks of the natural man, now 
found its satisfaction in Him who came to make free indeed. 

^ Augustine, or another under his name (Serm. xcii. Apjmidix ): 
Nec dedignatus est conversationem hominum, qui usum carnis exce- 
perat. Nec secularia instituta contempsit, qui ad haec venerat corrigenda. 
Interfuit nuptiis, ut concordia3 jura firmaret. Tertullian, in his reckless 
method of snatching at any argument, finds rather a slighting of marriage 
than an honouring it in the fact that Christ, who was present at so many 
festivals, was yet present only at one marriage. Or this at least he will find, 
that since Christ was present but at one marriage, therefore monogamy 
is the absolute law of the new covenant. His words are characteristic 
{Be Monog. 9): Ille vorator et potator homo, prandiorum et coenarum 
cum publicanis frequentator, semel apud imas nuptias coenat, multis utique 
nubentibus. Totiens enim voluit celebrare eas, quotiens et esse. 


THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 


io8 

capable of being drawn np into the higher world of hoU- 
nesSj even as it is in danger of sinking down and coming 
under the law of the flesh and of the world ! ISTor is it 
without its significance, that this should have been a 
marriage, which He ‘adorned and beautified with his 
presence and first miracle that He wrought.’ Ho human 
relation is the type of so deep a spiritual mystery (cf, iii. 
29; Matt. ix. 15; xxii. 1-14; xxv. 10; Hev. xix. 7; xxi. 
2, 9; xxii. 17; 2 Cor. xi. 2), so worthy therefore of the 
highest honour. He foresaw too that, despite of this, 
some hereafter should arise in his Church who would 
despise marriage (i Tim. iv. 3), or, if not despise, yet fail 
to give the Christian family all its dignity and honour.^ 
These should find no countenance from him.^ At the 
same time Bengel probably is right when he urges that 
such a presence of his on such an occasion would scarcely 
have found place at a later period of his ministry. The 
shadows fell so heavily upon his soul, as the unbelief of 
the world fully revealed itself to Him, with his own rejec¬ 
tion and all which would follow on that rejection, that the 
mirth of a marriage festival, holy as it was or might be, 
would have too ill consented with the intense sadness of 
that time.^ 

1 Epiplianius {Hceres. Ixvii.); Augustine {In Ev. Joh. tract, xix.): 
Quod Dominus invitatus venerit ad nuptias, etiam excepta mystica signi- 
ficatione, confirmare voluit quod ipse fecit. ' 

® What a contrast does his presence here offer to the manner in which 
even a St. Cyprian yields up these very marriage festivals as occasions 
where purity must suffer 5 so that his counsel is, not to dispute them with 
the world, to vindicate them anew for holiness and for God, but only to 
avoid them altogether {De Hah. Virg. 3): Et quoniam continentiaB 
bonum quaerimus, perniciosa quaeque et infesta vitemus. Nec ilia prje- 
tereo quae dum neglig§ntia in usum veniunt, contra pudicos et sobrios 
mores licentiam sibi de usurpatione fecerunt. Quasdam non pudet 
nubentibus interesse. Nuptiaruni festa improba et convivia lasciva 
vitentur, quorum periculosa contagio est. Compare the picture which 
Chrysostom gives of marriage festivals in his time (tom. iii. p. 195^ Bened. 
ed.),—melancholy witnesses, yet not, as some would persuade us of a 
Church entangled anew in heathen defilements, but of one which had not 
as yet leavened an essentially heathen, though nominally Christian 
society, through and through with its own life and power. 

3 Magna facilitas Domini. Nuptiis interest primo tempore, dum 


TEE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 109 

^ xind when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith 
unto Him, They have no winel His and his disciples’ pre- 
Bence, unlooked-for perhaps, as of those just arrived from 
a journey, may have increased beyond expectation the 
number of the guests ; and so the provision made for their 
entertainment have proved insufB.cient. The Mother of 
the Lord, from one reason or another, did not account it 
unseemly to interfere with, and in some sort to guide, the 
festal arrangements.^ Perhaps she was near of kin to the 
bridegroom or the bride ; at all events she was distressed 
at the embarrassments of that humble household, and 
would willingly have removed them. Yet what exactly 
she expected from her divine Son, when she thus brought 
their need to Him, is hard to determine. She could not, 
from anterior displays of his power and grace (for see ver. 
ii), have now been emboldened to look for further mani¬ 
festations of the same. Some indeed take not so abso¬ 
lutely the denial of all miracles preceding, but with this 
limitation understood :—this was the first of his miracles 
wherein He showed forth his glory; other such works He 
may have performed already in the inner circle of his 
family, and thus have led them to expect more open 
displays of his grace and power. But, without evading 
thus the plain declaration of St. John, we may well 
understand how she, who had kept and pondered in her 
heart all the tokens and prophetic intimations of the 
coming glory of her Son (Luke ii. 19, 51), should believe 
that in Him powers were latent which, however He had 
restrained them until now. He could and would put forth, 
whenever a fit time had arrived.^ This is more probable 

discipulofl allicit, per severiores inde yias progressurus ad crucem, ad 
gloriam. 

^ Lightfoot {Harmony, in loc.; cf. Greswell, Dissert, vol. ii. p. izo) 
supposes it a marriage in the house of Mary (John xix, 25), wife of 
Cleophas. 

2 So Theophylact, Euthymius, and Neander, Lehen Jesu, p. 370; and 
8ee in this sense one good observation hy Godet, Comm, sur VEmng. di 
St. Jean, p. 348. 


no 


THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 


than to suppose that she had no definite pnrpose in these 
words; but only turned to Him now, as having ever found 
Him a wise counsellor in least things as in greatest.^ 
Bengel’s suggestion is curious, that it was a hint to Him 
that they should leave, and thus by their example break up 
the assembly, before the necessities of their hosts became 
manifest; ^ and Calvin’s is more curious still.^ 

But whatever may have been the motive of her inter¬ 
ference, it promises at first no good result. ^ Jesus saith 
unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee ? Mine hour is 
not yet come.’ Roman Catholic expositors have been very 
anxious to rid this answer of every shadow of rebuke or 
blame. Entire treatises have been written with this single 
purpose. How it is quite true that in the address ^ Woman ’ 
there is nothing of severity or harshness, though there 
may be the sound of such to an English ear. In his 
tenderest words to his mother from the cross. He employs 
the same address, ^ Woman, behold thy son ’ (John xix. 26). 
Indeed the compellation cannot fail to have something 
solemn in it, wherever the dignity of woman is felt. 
But it is otherwise with the words following, ^ What have 
I to do with thee All expositors of the early Church^ 

^ So Cocceiiis: Verba nihil aliud portendimt quam Mariam tanqiiam 
Bolicitam et parentem operuisse ipsi defectum vini, ex condolentia 
nimirum. 

2 Velim discedas, ut ceteri item discedant, anteqiiam penuria patefiat. 

3 Ut pia aliqua exhortatione con’pivis tsedium eximeret, ac simiil 
levaret pudorem sponsi. 

^ Tt ijuoi Kal aoi; cf. Judg. xi. 12; i Kin. xvii. 1852 Kin. iii. 13, where 
the same phrase is used ; it is elliptic, and the word koivov may be sup¬ 
plied; cf. Josh. xxii. 24; 2 Sam. xvi. 10; Matt. viii. 29; Mark i. 24; 
Luke viii. 28. It is only out of an entire ignorance of the idiom that 
some understand the words, ‘What is that to thee and Me? What con¬ 
cerns it us twain that there is no wine ?’ 

* Two examples for many. Irenseus (iii. i6): Properante Maria ad 
admirabile vini signum, et ante tempus volente participare compendii 
poculo, Dominus repellens ejus intempestivam festinationem, dixit, Quid 
mihi et tibi est, mulier ? nondum venit hora mea, expectans earn horam 
quse est a Patre prsecognita. He means by the compendii poculum, 
the cup of wine not resulting from the slower processes of nature, but 
made per saltura, at a single intervention of divine power, therefore com- 


THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 


Ill 


Kave found in them more or less of reproof and repulse; 
the Roman Catholics themselves admit the appearance of 
such; only they deny the reality. He so replied, they say, 
to teach us, not her, that higher respects than those of flesh 
and blood moved Him to the selecting of that occasion 
for the first putting forth of his divine power. ^ Most 
certainly it was to teach this ; but to teach it first to her, 
who from her wondrous position as the ‘ blessed among 
women ’ was, more than any other, in danger of forgetting 
it; and in her to teach it to all. ^ She had not yet,’ says 
Chrysostom, ^ that opinion of Him, which she ought, but 
because she bare Him, counted that, after the manner of 
other mothers, she might in all things command Him, 
whom it more became her to reverence and worship as her 
Lord.’ ^ The true parallel to this passage, and that throw¬ 
ing most light on it, is Matt. xii. 46-50. X 

And yet, doubtless, any severity which this answer may 
wear in the reading, was mitigated by the manner of its 
speaking ; allowing, as this plainly must have done, a near 
compliance with her request to look through the apparent 
refusal. For when she ‘ saith unto the servants. Whatsoever 
He saith unto you, do it,’^ it is evident she read, and, as the 
sequel shows, rightly read, a Yes latent in his apparent Ho. 
Luther bids us here to imitate her faith, who, nothing 
daunted by the semblance of a refusal, reads between the 

pendiously. Cf. iii. 11; and Chrysostom ascribes her request to vanity 
{Horn. xxi. in JoTl.'): 'EidotiXEro . . . kavrriv Xafi-n-porepav Troifjaai Sid tov 
nai^oc, therefore was it that Christ aipodporepov diTEKpivaTo. 

■ 1 Maldonatus: Simulavit se matrem reprehendere, cum minime 
reprehenderet, ut ostenderet se non humano, non sanguinis respectu, sed 
sola caritate, et ut sese, quis sit, declaret, miraculum facere. St. Bernard 
had gone before him in this explanation: it was, he says, for our sakes 
Christ so answered, ut converses ad Bominum jam non solliciiet carna- 
lium cura parentum, et necessitudines illse non impediant exercitium 
spirituale. 

* Horn. xxi. in Joli. 

^ The words are curiously like those of Pharoah, when he designates 
Joseph to the Egyptians as the one who should supply all their needs 
{Gen. xli. 55)5 the occasions too are not wholly dissimilar. Was the 
resemblance intentional P 


112 THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE, 

lilies of this refusal a better answer to her prayer ; is con¬ 
fident that even the infirmity which clave to it shall not 
defeat it altogether; is so confident of this, as to indicate 
not obscurely the very manner of its granting. And yet 
this confidence of hers in his new interposition, following so 
close as it does on that announcement of his, ‘ Mine hour 
is not yet come/ is not without its difficulty. If they were 
not interpreted by the event, these words might seem to 
defer not for some briefest interval the manifestation of 
his glory, but to postpone it altogether to some remote 
period of his ministry. Indeed, his ‘ hour ’ is generally, 
most of all in the language of St. John, the hour of his 
passion, or of his departure from the world (vii. 30; viii. 
20; xii. 23, 27; xiii. i; xvii. i^). Here, however, and 
perhaps on one other occasion (vii.. 6), it indicates a time 
close at hand. So she rightly understood it. Hot till the 
wine was wholly exhausted would his ^ hour ’ have arrived. 
When all other help fails, then and not tiU then the ‘ hour ’ 
of the great Helper wiU have struck. Then wiU be time 
to act, when by the entire failure of the wine, manifest to 
all, the miracle shall be above aU suspicion; else in 
Augustine’s words. He might seem rather to mingle ele¬ 
ments than to change them. ^ 

Yery beautiful is the facility with which our Lord yields 
Himself to the supply, not of the absolute wants merely, 
but of the superfluities, of others; yet this, as I must believe, 
not so much for the guests’ sake, as for that of the bridal 
pair, whose marriage feast, by the unlooked-for short¬ 
coming of the wine, was in danger of being exposed to 

^ It is 6 KnipoQ tliere, r) lopa here. 

So in the Appendix to St. Augustine {Serm. xcii.): Ilac responsione 
interim dehemus advertere quod de nuptiali vino pars aliqua adhuc forte 
resederat. Ideo nondum erat Domini plena hora virtutum. ne miscere 
magis elementa quam mutare videretur [ne aqua vino admixta crederetur: 
Grotius]. Maldonatus: Cur ergo miraculum fecit, si tempus non venerat? 
Non venerat cum mater petivit; venerat cum fecit, modico licet inter- 
vallo. So Cyril, Chrysostv^m, Theophylact, Euthymius. 


THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 


”3 


mockery and scorn. ^ We may contrast this his readiness 
to aid others, with his stern refusal to minister by the 
same almighty power to his own extremest necessities. 
He who turned water into wine, might have made bread 
out of stones (Matt. iv. 4) but spreading a table for others. 
He is content to hunger and to thirst Himself. 

The conditions under which the miracle was accom¬ 
plished are all, as Chrysostom ® long ago observed, such 
as exclude every suspicion of collusion. ^ And there were 
set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the puri¬ 
fying of the Jews, containing two or three firhins apiece. 
Jesus saith unto them. Fill the waterpots with water. And 
they filled them up to the hrim.^ They were vessels for 
water, not for wine ; thus none could insinuate that pro¬ 
bably some sediment of wine remained in them, which, 
lending a flavour to water poured on it, formed thus a 
thinnest kind of wine 5 as every suggestion of the same 
kind is excluded by the praise which the ruler of the 
feast bestows upon the new supply (ver. 10). The cir¬ 
cumstance of these vessels being at hand is accounted for. 
They were there by no premeditated plan, but in accord¬ 
ance with the customs and traditionary observances of the 
Jews in the matter of washing (Matt, xv. 2; xxiii. 25; 
Mark vii. 2-4 ; Luke xi. 38); for this seems more probable 
than that this ^purifying ’ has reference to any distinctly 
commanded legal observances. The quantity, too, which 
these vessels contained, was enormous ; not such as might 
have been brought in unobserved, but ^ two or three firhins 
apiecel And the vessels were empty; those therefore who 
cn that bidding had filled them, as they knew, with water, 
became themselves by this act of theirs witnesses to the 
reality of the miracle. But for this it might only have 

* Hilary {De Trin. iii. 5) : Sponsus tristis est, familia turtatur, 
sollemnitas nuptialis convivii periclitatur. 

* Augucllue {Serm. cxxiii. 2): Qui poterat talia facere, dignatus est 
mdigere. Qui fecit de aqua vinum, potuit facere et de lapidibus panem. 

* Horn. xxii. {71 Joh. 


114 THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 

appeared, as in fact it did only appear to tlie ruler of the 
feast, that the wine came from some unexpected quarter; 
he hnew hot whence it was; hut the servants which drew the 
water ,—not, that is, the water now made wine, but who 
had drawn the simpler element on which the Lord put 
forth his transforming powers,—^ hnew I 

^ And He saith unto them, Draw out how, and hear unto 
the governor of the feasti It has been debated whether 
this ‘ governor ’ was himself one of the guests, set either 
by general consent or by the selection of the host over the 
banquet; or a chief attendant, charged with ordering the 
course of the entertainment, and overlooking the minis¬ 
trations of the inferior servants.^ The analogy of Greek and 
Roman usages* points him out as himself a guest, invested 
with this o£ 0 .ce for the time; and a passage in the Apo¬ 
crypha'* shows that the custom of selecting such a master 
of the revels was in use among the Jews. Indeed the 
freedom of remonstrance which he allows himself with 
the bridegroom seems decisive of his position, that it is 
not that of an underling, but an equal. It was for him to 
taste and distribute the wine; to him, therefore, the Lord 

' The Vulgate rightly : Qui hauserant. De Wette: Welche das 
Wasser geschopfet hatten. So the Ambrosian Hymn: 

Vel hydriis plenis aqum 
Vino saporem infuderis, 

Ilausit minister conscius 
Quod ipse non impleverat. 

^ So by Severus ; by Jnvencus, who calls him summum ministrum; 
by Kuinoel, and others. 

* This apxirpiKXtvog will then answer to the Greek (TvpTromopxrjc, the 
rex convivii, magister convivii, modimperator, or arbiter bibendi (Horace) 
of the Komans. It was his part, in the words of Plato, Traidaycoytlv 
GvixTrocnov (Becker, Charicles, vol. i. p. 465). He appears here as the 
TrpnyivarrjQ. The word dpxirpinXivog is late, and of rare occurrence; 
Petronius has triclinarches. 

^ Ecclus. xxxii. i, 2: ‘If thou be made the master of a feast (r)yov- 
fiEvoc), lift not thyself up, but be among them as one of the rest; take 
diligent care of them, and so sit down. And when thou hast done all 
thy office, take thy place, that thou mayest be merry with them, and 
receive a crown for thy well ordering of the feast.’ * 


THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 


115 

commanded that this should be first brought, even in this 
little matter allowing and honouring the established order 
and usage of society, and giving to every man his due. 

‘ And they hare water now no more, but wine. Like 
other acts of creation, or, more strictly, of hecoming, this of 
the water becoming wine, is withdrawn from sight. That 
which is poured into the jars as water is drawn out as 
wine; but the actual process of the change we toil in vain 
to conceive; and can only fall back on the profound 
maxim: Subtilitas naturse longe superat subtilitatem men¬ 
tis humanse. And yet in truth it is in no way stranger, 
save in the rapidity with which it is effected, than that 
which is every day going forward among us ; but to which 
use and custom have so dulled our eyes, that commonly we 
do not marvel at it at all; and, because we can call it by 
its name, suppose that we have discovered its secret, or 
rather that there is no secret in it to discover. He who 
each year prepares the wine in the grape, causing it to 
absorb, and swell with, the moisture of earth and heaven, 
to transmute this into nobler juices of its own, did now 
concentrate all those slower processes into a single mo¬ 
ment, and accomplish in an instant what usually He takes 
many months to accomplish.^ This analogy dees not help 
us to understand what the Lord at this time did, but yet 
brings before us that in it He was working in the line of 
{above, indeed, but not across, or counter to) his more ordi¬ 
nary operations, the unnoticed miracles of everyday na¬ 
ture. That which this had peculiarly its own, which took 
it out from the order of nature, was the power and will by 
which all the intervening steps of these tardier processes 
were overleaped, their methods superseded, and the result 
attained in an instant.* 

Void le vin qui tombe du del, is the not uncommen exdamation of 
ihe French peasantry, when the rain is falling on their vineyards at the 
liglit season. 

* Augustine {In Ev. Joh. tract, viii.); Ipse enim fecit vinum illo die 
in nuptiis in sex illis hydriis quas impieri aqua praecepit, qui onini anno 


TEE WATER TURNED IE TO WINE. 


116 

‘ When the rider of the feast had tasted the water that was 
made wine, and knew not whence it was {hut the servants 
which djrew the water knew), the governor of the feast called 
the bridegroom,^ —called, that is, to him,^ and with some¬ 
thing of a festive exclamation, not nnsnitable to the season, 
exclaimed : ^ Every man at the beginning doth set forth good 
wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is 
worse but thou hast kept the good wine until now! Many 
interpreters have been very anxious to rescue the word, 
which we have rendered ^ well drunk,’ from implying aught 
of excess ; ^ lest it might appear that we had here one of 
those unseemly revels {temulenta convivia Cyprian calls 
them) which too often disgraced a marriage,^—with all the 
difficulties, of Christ’s sanctioning with his j)resence so 
great an abuse of God’s gifts, and, stranger still, ministering 
by his divine power to a yet further excess. But there is 
no need thus anxiously to deal with the word.^ We may 
be quite sure there was no such excess here; for to this 
the Lord would as little have given allowance by his pre- 

facit lioc in vitibus. Sicut enim quod miserimt ministri in bydrias, in 
yiniini conyersum est opere Domini, sic et quod nubes fundunt, in yinum 
conyertitur ejusdem opere Domini. Illud autem non miramur, quia 
Omni anno fit; assiduitate amisit admirationeni. And. again {Serni. 
cxxiii. 3): Quse aqua erat, yinum factum yiderunt liomines et obstupue- 
runt. Quid aliud fit de pluvia per radicem yitis ? Ipse ilia fecit, ipse 
ista ; ilia ut pascaris, ista ut mireris. So also De Gen. ad Litt. yi. 13. 
Chrysostom (TZbwi. xxii. in Joh .); Auki/vq otl avrog lanv 6 tv raTg 
njiTriXoic to vStop ptTafSdWwVf Kal tov vtrov Cid Tpg pAng oIj-ov rptTrojj', 
orrtp tv Tip (fjvrip did ttoWov yjOOJ'ou ylvsTai, tovto dOpoov tv Tip ydfiip 

floyduaTo. Cf. Gregory the Great, Moral, yi. 15; and Theodoret, Hcer. 
Eah. Coynp. 1 . 5, who calls it dytwpyrjrov olvov. 

1 Maldonatua: Non quod ad se yenire jusserit, quod minime fuisset 
urbanum, sed quod recumbentem appellans interrogayerit, quid optimum 
vinum in finem reseryasset. 

^ Pliny {H. N, xiy. 14) denounces the meanness of some, qui conyiyia 
alia quam sibimet ipsis ministrant, ?i\\t procedente mensd subjiciunt. 

^ Of. Gen. xliii. 33, LXX, where the same word occurs. ' 

^ De Hah. Virg'. i. j 

^ Augustine, indeed, goes further than any, for he makes not merely q 
the guests, but the ruler of the feast himself to haye ‘ well drunk ’ indeed. ^ 
The Lord not merely made wine, but, he adds {De Gen. ad Lilt. yi. 131, \ 

tale yinum, quod cbrius etiam conviva laudarct. 


THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 


117 

Bence, as He would have helped it forward by a special 
wonder-work of his own. ‘ The ruler of the feast ’ does but 
refer to a common practice, and at the same time notice 
the motive, namely, that men’s palates after a while are 
blunted, and their power of discerning between good and 
bad is diminished ; and thus an inferior wine passes with 
them then, which would not have past current with them 
before. There is no special reference to the guests present, 
but only to the corrupt customs and fashions too common 
in the world;*—and none would find one, who were not 
eager to mar, if by any means they could, the image of a 
perfect Holiness, which offends and rebukes them. 

Of a piece with this is their unworthy objection, to whom 
the miracle is incredible, seeing that, even if the Lord did 
not minister to an excess already commenced, still by the 
creation of ^ so large and perilous a quantity of wine ’ (for 
the quantity was enormous^), He would have put temptation 
in men’s way. With the same justice every good gift of 
God which is open to any possible abuse, every plenteous 
return of the field, every large abundance of the vineyard, 
might be accused of being a temptation put in men’s way ; 
and so in some sort it is (cf. Luke xii. 16), a proving of 
men’s temperance and moderation in the midst of abun¬ 
dance.^ Lor man is not to be perfected by exemption/row- 

' Bengel well: Simpliciter recensetur oratio architriclini et consue- 
tudo etiam Judseorum ; ebrietas non approbatur. 

* The Attic fiirprjTTjg (=( 3 dSog=jz ^EcrTai=jz sextarii) contains 8 
gallons 7'365 pints, imperial measure; so that each of these six vessels, 
containing two or three fierprjTai apiece, did in round numbers hold some 
twenty gallons or more. 

® Calvin: Nostro vitio fit, si ejus benignitas imtamentum est luxuriae ; 
quin potius haec temperantise nostrse vera est probatio, si in media 
affluentia parci tamen et moderati sumus: cf. Suicer, Thes. s. v. oh^oc. 
It is instructive to notice the ascetic tone which Strauss takes (Leben 
Jesu, vol. ii. p. 229), when speaking of this ‘ Luxuswunder,’ as he terms 
it, contrasted with that which he assumes when he desires to depreciate 
the character of John the Baptist: but truly he is of that generation 
that call Jesus a wine-bibber, and say that John has a devil; with 
whom that which is godlike can in no form find favour. Some of 


Ii8 THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 

temptation, but rather by victory in temptation; and the 
only temperance which has any value at all, which indeed 
deserves the name, is one which has its source not in the 
scanty supply, but in the strong self-restraint. That this 
gift should be large, was what we might have looked for. 
He, a King, gave as became a king. Ko niggard giver in 
the ordinary bounties of his kingdom of nature (Ps. Ixv. 
9-13), neither was He a niggard giver now, when He 
brought those common gifts into the kingdom of his grace, 
and made them directly to serve Him there (cf. Luke 
V. 6, 7). 

But the governor of the feast, who only meant to de¬ 
scribe a sordid economy of this world, gave utterance to a 
deeper truth than he meant. Such at any rate may be 
most fitly superinduced upon his words ; nothing less than 
the whole difference between the order of Christ’s giving 
and of the world’s. The world does indeed give its best 
and choicest, its ^ good wine,^ first, but has only poorer 
substitutes at the last. ^ When men have well drunk,’ when 
their spiritual palate is blunted, when they have lost the 
discernment between moral good and evil, then it palms 
on them that which is worse; what it would not have 
dared to offer at the first,—coarser pleasures, viler enjoy¬ 
ments, the drink of a more deadly wine. Those who wor¬ 
ship the world must confess at last that it is best repre¬ 
sented by that great image 'which Hebuchadnezzar beheld 
in his dream (Dan. ii. 31); the head showing as fine gold, 
but the material growing ever baser, till it finishes with 
the iron and clay at the last. 

‘ To be a prodigal’s favourite, then, worse lot! 

A miser’s pensioner,’ 

this is the portion of its votaries. But it is otherwise with 
the guests of Christ, the heavenly bridegroom. He ever 
reserves for them whom He has bidden, ^ the good wine ’ 

Woolston’s vilest ribaldry {Fourth Discourse m the Miracles of our 
Savimr, p. 23 sqq,) is spent upon this theme. 


THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 


119 

unto the last.’ In the words of the most eloquent of our 
divines, ^ The world presents us with fair language, pro¬ 
mising hopes, convenient fortunes, pompous honours, and 
these are the outside of the howl; but when it is swal¬ 
lowed, these dissolve in an instant, and there remains 
bitterness and the malignity of coloquintida. Every sin 
smiles in the first address, and carries light in the face, 
and honey in the lip; but when yiq have well drunk” 
then comes that which is worse” a whip with six strings, 
fears and terrors of conscience, and shame and displeasure, 
and a caitiff disposition, and diffidence in the day of death. 
But when after the manner of purifying of the Christians, 
we fill our waterpots with water, watering our couch with 
our tears, and moistening our cheeks with the perpetual 
distillations of repentance, then Christ turns, our water 
into wine, first penitents and then communicants—first 
waters of sorrow and then the wine of the chalice; . . . 
for Jesus keeps the best wine to the last, not only because 
of the direct reservations of the highest joys till the nearer 
approaches of glory, but also because our relishes are 
higher after a long fruition than at the first essays, such 

* Tlius n. de Sto. Victore (De Arc. 3 Ioi\ i. i) : Oiiinis namque homo, 
id est, carnalis primum vinum bonum ponit, quia in sua delectatione fal- 
sam qiiandam dulcedinem sentit; sed postquam furor mali desiderii 
mentem inebriaverit, tunc quod deterius est propinat, quia spina conscien- 
tiae superveniens mentem, quam prius false delectabat, graviter cruciat. 
Sed Sponsus noster postremo vinum bonum porrigit, dum mentem, quam 
sui dulcedine amoris replere disponit, quadam prius tribulationum com- 
punctione amaricari sinit, ut post gustum amaritudinis avidius bibatur 
suavissimum poculum caritatis. Corn, a Lapide : Hie est tvpus fallaciao 
mundi, qui initio res speciosas oculis objicit, deinde sub iis deteriores 
et viles inducit, itaque sui amatores decipit et illudit. An unknown 
author (Bernardi 0 pp. vol. ii. p. 513) : In futura enim vita aqua omnis 
laboris et actionis terrense in vinum divinse contemplatiouis commuta- 
bitur, implebunturque omnes hydriae usque ad summum. Omnes enim 
implebuntur in bonis domus Domini, cum illae desiderabiles nuptiae 
Sponsi et sponsae celebrabuntur: bibeturque in summa laetiti^ omnium 
clamantium Domino et dicentium; Tu bonum vinum servasti usque 
adhuc, I know not from whence this line comes, 

Hie merum tarde, dat tamen ille merum; 
but it evidently belongs to this miracle. 


120 


THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 


being tlie nature of grace, that it increases in relisb. as it 
does in fruition, every part of grace being new duty and 
new reward.’ ^ 

‘ This heginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee,'^ 
•—even there where it was prophesied long before that the 
people which sat in darkness should see a great light 
(Isai. ix. I; Matt. iv. 14-16). The Evangelist expressly 
and pointedly excludes from historic credit the miracles of 
the Infancy, which are found in such rank abundance in 
nearly all the apocryphal Gospels; for, of course, he does 
not mean that this was the first miracle which Jesus 
wrought in Cana, but that this miracle in Cana was the 
first which He wrought 3 ^ and the Church has ever regarded 
these words as decisive on this point.^ The statement is 
important, and connects itself with one main purpose of 
St. John in his Gospel, namely, to repel and remove all 
unreal notions concerning the person of his Lord—notions 
which nothing would have helped more to uphold than 
those merely phantastic and capricious miracles, favourites, 
therefore, with all manner of docetic heretics,—which are 
ascribed to his infancy. 

Of none less than the Son could it be affirmed that He 
^ manifested forth his glory ; ’ for ^ glory ’ {Bo^a) here being 
no creaturely attribute but a divine, comprehended and 

* Jeremy Taylor, Life of Christ. Worthy to stand beside this, and 
unfolding the same thought, is that exquisite poem in The Christian 
Year, upon the second Sunday after Epiphany, suggested by this miracle, 
the Gospel of that day; while Plato {Rep. n. 613) supplies a grand 
heathen parallel, and commentary, by anticipation on these words. 

2 Thus Tertullian {De Rapt. 9) calls it, prima riidimenta potestatis 
suae; and this day has been sometimes called, dies natalis Tirtutum 
Domini. 

3 Thus see Epiphanius {Ilm'. li. 20), from whom we gather that some 

Catholics were inclined to admit these miracles of the Infancy, as 
affording an argument against the Cerinthians, and a proof that it was 
not at his Baptism first that the Christ was united to the man Jesus. 
And Euthymius (in loc.) : la-opriatv avro [6 xp^mpetrov tig to prj 

TTiffrevtiv Tolg Xeyopkvoig TrruSdcoTg Bavpani rov Xpiarov. Cf. ChrySOStom, 
Horn, xvi., XX., xxii. in Joh .; and Thilo, Cod. Apocr. p. Ixxxiv. sqq. 


THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 


I2I 


involved in the idea of the Logos as the absolute Light, 
every other would have manifested forth the glory of God; 
He only, being God, could manifest forth his own.^ As 
God He rays forth light from Himself, and this effluence is 
‘ his glory ’ (John i. 14; Matt. xvi. 27 ; Mark viii. 38). The 
Evangelist, as one cannot doubt, has Isai. xh 5,—^ and the 
glory of the Lord shall be revealed,’—in his eye, claiming 
that in this act of Christ’s those words were fulfilled. Of 
this ‘ glory of the Lord ’ we hear continually in the Old 
Testament: thus Ezek. xi. 23; xxxix. 21; xliii. 2. While 
He tabernacled as the Son of Man upon earth it was for 
the most part hidden. The veil of flesh which He had 
consented to wear concealed it from the sight of men. 
But now, in this work of grace and power, it burst through 
the covering which concealed it, revealing itself to the 
eyes of his disciples ; they ‘ beheld his glory, the glory as 
of the only begotten of the Father.’^ ^ And his disciples 

^ We should not fail to put into connexion the of this 

Christ’s first miracle, and the 8 <pavsp(x)(Te of his last (xxi. i, 14). It is to 
be regretted that the same English word has not on all these occasions 
been used. On this matter Godet has beautifully said: Les miracles 
de J^sus ne sont pas de simples prodiges {repara) destines a frapper 
I’im agination; ce sont des emblemes visibles de ce qu’il est, et de ce 
qu’il vient faire, et des images rayonnantes du miracle permanent de la 
manifestation du Christ. 

* The Eastern Church counted the Baptism of Christ, being his recog¬ 
nition before men and by men in his divine character, for the great 
manifestation of his glory to the world, for his Epiphany, and was wont 
to celebrate it as such. But the Western, which laid not such stress on 
the Baptism, saw his Epiphany rather in the adoration of the Magians, 
the first-fruits of the heathen world. At a later period, indeed, it 
placed other great moments in his life, moments in which his h()%<x 
gloriously shone out, in connexion with this festival; such, for instance, 
as the Baptism, as the feeding of the five thousand, and as this turning 
of the water into wine, which last continually afibrds a theme to later 
writers of the Western Church for the homily at Epiphany, as it 
gives ns the Gospel for one of the Epiphany Sundays. But these 
secondary allusions belong not to the first introduction of the feast, so 
that the following passage should have prevented the editors of the new 
volume of St. Augustine’s sermons {Serm. Inediti, Paris 1842) from 
attributing the sermon which contains it (Serm. xxxviii. in Epiph.) to 
him; Hodiernam diem Ecclesia per orbem celebrat totum, sive quod 
Stella pr 83 ceteris fulgens divitibus Magis parvum non parvi Begis mon- 


122 


THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 


believed on Him’ (cf. xvi. 30, 31). The work, besides its 
more immediate purpose, had this further result; it con¬ 
firmed, strengthened, exalted their faith, who, already 
believing in Him, were thus the more capable of receiving 
an increase of faith,—of being lifted from faith to faith, 
advanced from faith in an earthly teacher to faith in a 
heavenly Lord^ (i Kin. xvii. 24). 

This first miracle of the Hew Covenant has its inner 
mystical meaning. The first miracle of Moses was a 
turning of water into blood (Exod. vii. 20); and this had 
its fitness; for the law, which came by Moses, was a 
ministration of death, and working wrath (2 Cor. iii. 6-9). 
But the first miracle of Christ was a turning of water into 
wine, this too a meet inauguration of all which should 
follow, for his was a ministration of life; He came, the 
dispenser of that true wine that maketh glad the heart of 
man (Ps. civ. 15). Yet as Moses there, where he stands 
in contrast to Christ, has a change to the worse, so in 
another place, where he stands as his type, he has, like 
Him, a change to the better (Exod. xv. 25), changing the 
bitter waters to sweet; thus too Elisha (2 Kin, ii. 19-22); 
while yet the more excellent transmutation, which should 
be not merely the rectifying of qualities already existing, 
but the imparting of new, was reserved for the Son; who 
was indeed not a betterer of the old life of man, but the 
bringer in of a new; who did not reform, but regenerate. 
This prophetic aspect of the miracle we must by no means 

stravithospitium, sive quod hodie Cliristus primum fecisse dicitur signum, 
quando aquas repente commutavit in vinum, sive quod a Joanne isto die 
creditur baptizatus et Patris consona voce Pei filius revelatur. In bis 
genuine sermons Augustine knows only of the adoration of the Wise 
Men as the scriptural fact which the Epiphany commemorates. 

^ This is plainly the true explanation (in the words of Ammonius, npoe- 
OrjKrjv l^kKapTo nva tig avTov Trlartiogj of Grotius, Credidisse dicuntur 
qui firmius credunt) ; not that which Augustine (De Cons. Evang. ii. 
17), for the interests of his Harmony, upholds; namely, that they are 
called ‘ disciples ’ by anticipation; because subsequently to the miracle 
they believed (non jam discipulos, sed qui futuri erant discipuli intelligere 
debemus) ; as one might say, The Apostle Paul was bom at Tarsus. 


THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE, 


123 


miss. ' He who turned now the water into wine, should 
turn in like manner the poorer dispensation, the thin and 
watery elements of the Jewish religion (Heb. vii. 18), into 
richer and nobler, into the gladdening wine of a higher 
faith. The whole Jewish dispensation in its comparative 
weakness and poverty was aptly symbolized by the water; 
and only in type and prophecy could it point to Him, who 
should come ‘ binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass’s 
colt unto the choice vine; ’ who ^ washed his garments in 
wine and his clothes in the blood of grapes ’ (Gen. xlix. 11; 
cf. John XV. i), and who now by this work of his gave 
token that He was indeed come, that his people’s joy might 
be full.^ Hor less do we behold symbolized here, that 

^ Corn, a Lapide: Cbristus ergo initio suae praedicationis mutans 
aqiiam in vinum significabat se legem Mosaicam, instar aquae insipidam 
et frigidam, conversurum in Evangelium gratiae, quae instar vina est, 
generosa, sapida, ardens, et efficax. And Bernard, in a preeminently 
beautiful sermon upon this miracle (Bened. ed. p. 814): Tunc [aqua] 
mutatur in vinum, cum timor expellitur a caritate, et implentur omnia 
fervore spiritus et jucunda devotione ; cf. De Divers, Sej'm, xviii. 2 ; and 
Eusebius {Dem. Evang, ix. 8) : ^v/xiSoXov rjv to Tvapaco^hv fivariKiortpov 
Kpauaroc, perajSXriOiyroQ tKTiit; (TcopariKiorepag IttI Trjvvoepav kuI TrvavpaTiKt'iv 
tV(!>po(TVVi]v Tov TTifTTiKOV Tr}Q Kaivrjg AinOrjKTig Kpoparog, AugUStilie is in the 
same line, when he says (In Ev. Joh. tract, ix.) : Tollitur yelamen, cum 
transieris ad Dominum, . . . et quod aqua erat, vinum tibi fit. Lege 
libros omnes propheticos, non intellecto Christo, quid tarn insipidum et 
fatuum iuvenies.'^ Intellige ibi Christum, non solum sapit quod legis, 
sed etiam inebriat. He illustrates this from Luke xxiv. 25-27. Gregory 
the Great (Horn. vi. in Ezek.) gives it another turn: Aqiiam nobis in 
vinum vertit, quando ipsa historia per allegorise mysterium, in spiritalem 
nobis intelligentiam commutatur.—Before the rise of the Eutychian 
heresy had made it perilous to use such terms as KpaTig, drdicpamg, p'l^ig, 
to designate the union of the two natures in Christ, or such phrases as 
Tertullian’s Deo mixtus homo, we sometimes find allusions to what 
Christ here did, as though it were symbolical of the ennobling of the 
human nature through its being transfused by the divine in his person. 
Thus Irenaeus (v. i, 3) complains of the Ebionites, that they cling to the 
first Adam who was cast out of Paradise, and will know nothing of the 
second, its restorer: Reprobant itaque hi commixtionem vini caelestis, et 
solam aquam secularem voluut esse,—so Dorner ( Von der Pei'son Christi, 
p. 57) understands this passage: yet possibly he may refer there to their 
characteristic custom of using water alone, instead of wine mingled with 
water, in the Holy Communion: the passage will even then show how 
Irenaeus found in the wine and in the water apt symbols of the higher 
and the lower, of the divine and human. 


124 


THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 


wliole work wliicli tke Son of God is evermore accomplishing 
in the world,—ennobling all that He touches, making 
saints out of sinners, angels out of men, and in the end 
heaven out of earth, a new paradise of God out of the old 
wilderness of the world. Tor the prophecy of the world’s 
regeneration, of the day in which his disciples shall drink 
of the fruit of the vine new in his kingdom, is here. In 
this humble supper we have the rudiments of the glorious 
festival, at the arrival of which his ‘ hour ’ shall have 
indeed come, who is Himself the true Bridegroom, even as 
his Church is the Bride. 

Irenseus associates this miracle and that of the multiply¬ 
ing of the loaves; ^ and, contemplating them together as a 
prophecy of the Eucharist, finds alike in each a witness 
against all Gnostic, as Chrysostom against all Manicha3an,^ 
notions of a creation originally impure. The Lord, he 
says, might have created, with no subjacent material, the 
wine with which he cheered these guests, the bread with 
which He fed those multitudes; but He preferred to put 
forth his power on his Father’s creatures, in witness that 
the same God, who in the beginning had made the waters 
and caused the earth to bear its fruits, did in those last 
days give by his Son the cup of blessing and the bread of 
life.3 

^ Con. Hcer. iii. 11. 

* Horn. xxii. in Joh. 

* The account of this miracle by Sedulius is a favourable specimen of 
his poetry: 

Prima suae Dominus, thalamis dignatus adesse, 

Virtutis documenta dedit j convivaque praesens 
Pascere, non pasci, veniens, mirabile! fusas 
In vinum convertit aquas; dimittere gaudent 
Pallorem latices ; mutavit laesa [laeta ?] saporem 
Unda suum, largita merum, mensasque per omnes 
Dulcia non nato rubuerunt pocula musto. 

Implevit sex ergo lacus hoc nectare Christus, 

Quippe ferax qui Vitis erat, virtute colona 
Omnia fructificans, cujus sub tegmine blando 
Mitis inocciduas enutrit pampinus uvas. 


THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE. 125 

And Crashaw’s lines are pretty : 

Unde rubor vestris et non siia purpura lympbis P 
Quae rosa mirantes tarn nova mutat aquas ? 

Numen, convivae, praesens agnoscite numen: 

Lympba pudica Deum vidit et erubuit. 

It was a favourite subject for earliest Christian Art. On many old 
sarcophagi Jesus is seen standing and touching with the rod of Moses, 
the rod of might usually placed in his hand when He is set forth as a 
worker of wonders, three vessels,— three, because in his skill-less delinea¬ 
tions the artist could not manage to find room for more. Sometimes He 
has a roll of writing in his hand, as much as to say. This is wnrten in 
the Scripture; or the governor of the feast is somewhat earnestly re¬ 
buking the bridegroom for having withheld the good wine to the last; 
haidng himself tasted, he is giving to him the cup, to coitvince him of 
his error (Miinter, Sinnhild. d. alt. Christ, vol. ji. p. 91). 


t. THE HEALING OF THE NOBLEMAN'S SOB 


John iv. 46-54. 

T he difficulties of the three verses which go befoi^^ this 
miracle (ver. 43-45), and which, so to speah, account 
for the Lord’s renewed presence at Cana, are considerable, 
and the explanations of these difficulties very various. 
But it is unnecessary to enter here on this tangled question, 
and it will be sufficient to take up the thread of the narra¬ 
tive at ver. 46 : ‘80 Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, 
ivliere He made the water ivme.’ It is altogether in St. 
John’s manner thus to identify a place or person, by some 
single circumstance which has made them memorable in 
the Church for ever; thus comparevii. 50 ; xix. 39 ; again, 
i. 44; xii. 21; and again, xiii. 23, 25; xxi. 20. ^ And 

there was a certain nobleman,^ whose son was sicJc at Cajper^ 

* The precise meaning of (SamXiKog here can never be exactl}^ fixed; 
Chrysostom {Horn. xxxv. in Joh.') can only suggest a meaning; so that 
even in his day it was obscure to them with whom Greek was a living 
language. Three meanings have been offered. Either he is one of the 
king’s party, a royalist, one of tho^ie that sided with the faction of the 
Herods, father and son, and helped to maintain them on the throne, in 
fact ‘an Ilerodian’ (Lightfoot) ; or, with a narrower signification, he is 
one attached to the court, ‘ a courtier,’ so in the margin of our Bibles ; 
aulicus, or as Jerome {In Esai. Ixv.) calls him palatinus (regulus qui 
Greece dicitur (SanXiKoc, quem nos de aula regia rectius interpretari 
possumus palatinum (so Plutarch, Sol. xxv ii.; Ado. Col. xxxiii.; Josephus, 
B. J. vii. 5,2); or/3/^iAu'oc may mean one of royal blood; in Lucian it 
is four times applied to kings, or those related to them. Perhaps no 
better term could be found than ^nobleman' which has something of the 
doubtfulness of the original which it renders. I borrow from Malan 
{St. John, translated from the eleven oldest Versions') the following list of 


HEALING THE NOBLEMANS SON. 


127 


naum ’ —possibly, as by some has been supposed,^ Chuza, 
‘ Herod’s steward,’ whose wife, remarkably enough, appears 
among the holy women that ministered to the Lord of 
their substance (Luke viii. 3; cf. ver. 53). Only some 
mighty and marvellous work of this kind would have 
drawn a steward of Herod’s, with his family, into the 
Gospel net. Others have suggested Manaen, the foster- 
brother of Herod (Acts xiii. i). But whether one of these, 
or some other not elsewhere named in Scripture, ‘ when he 
heard that Jesus was come out of Judcea into Galilee, he luent 
unto Him, and besought Him that He would come down, and 
heal his son ; for he was at the point of death.’ From a 
certain severity which speaks out in our Lord’s reply, 
^Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe,’ we 
conclude that this petitioner was one driven Ao Jesus by 
the strong constraint of an outward need, a need which no 
other but He could supply (Isai. xxvi. 16), rather than one 
drawn by the inner necessities and desires of his soul; one 
who would not have come at all, but for this.* Sharing in 
the carnal temper of the Jews in general (for the plural, 
‘ye will not believe,’ is meant to include many in a common 
condemnation), he had (hitherto, at least) no organ for 
perceiving the glory of Christ as it shone out in his person 
and in his doctrine. ^ Signs and wonders ’ might compel 
him to a belief, but nothing else; unlike those Samaritans 
whom the Lord had just quitted, and who, without a 
miracle, had ^ believed because of his word ’ (John iv. 41). 

renderings: Syriac, ^king’s serrant;’ Armenian, ^one of the royal 
family; ’ Georgian, ^ government officer; ’ Slavonic, ‘ courtier j ’ Anglo- 
Saxon, ^under-king.’ 

^ Lightfoot, Chemnitz, and others. 

* Augustine {In Ev. Joh. tract, xvi.) takes a still more unfavourable 
estimate of the moral condition of this suppliant, classing him with those 
who asked of the Lord a sign, tempting Him: Arguit hominem in fide 
tepidiim aut frigidum, aut omnino nullius fidei: sed tentare cupientem 
de sanitate filii sui, qualis esset Christas, qusi esset, quantum posset 
Verba enim rogantis audivimus, cor diffidentis non videmus; sed illo 
pronuntiavit, qui et verba audivit, et cor inspexit. But coming in that 
temper, he would never have carried away a blessing at the last. 


128 


HEALING THE NOBLEMANS SON. 


But ^ the Jews require a sign ’ (i Cor. i. 22), and this one, 
in the poverty of his present faith, straitened and limited 
the power of the Lord. Christ must ^ come dovm,^ * if his 
son is to be healed; he cannot raise himself to the height 
of those words of the Psalmist, ‘ He sent his word, and He 
healed them.’* 

And yet, if there be rebuke in the Lord’s answer, there 
is encouragement too; an implied promise of a miracle, 
even while the man is blamed, that he needed a miracle, 
that less than a miracle would not induce him to put his 
trust in the Lord of life.® And so he accepts it; for 
reading no repulse in this word of a seeming, and indeed 
of a real, severity, he only urges his suit the more earnestly, 
‘ Sir, come down ere my child diej Still, it is true, he links 
help to the bodily presence of the Lord; is still far off 
from the faith and humility of another (Matt. viii. 8), who 
said, ‘Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come 
under my roof; but speak the word only, and my servant 
shall be healed.’ Much less does he dream of a power 
that could raise the dead: Christ might heal his sick; he 
does not dream of Him as one who could raise his dead. 
A faith so weak must be strengthened, and can only be 
strengthened through being proved. Such a gracious 
purpose of at once proving and strengthening it we trace 
in the Lord’s dealing with the man which follows. He 


^ Gregory the Great (In Ev. Horn, xxyiii.): Minus itaque in ilium 
credidit, quern non putavit posse salutem dare, nisi prjesens esset in 
corpore. 

® Bengel lays the entire emphasis on Idrjre in our Lord’s answer: Innuit 
Jesus se etiam absent! reguli filio posse vitam dare; et postulat ut 
regulus id credat, neque profectionem Jesu postulet suscipiendam cum 
ipso sanationem apud lectulum visuro. Others have done the same: see 
Kdcher, Analecta (in loc.). 

® Bengel: Siniul autem miraculum promittitur, fidesque prius etiam 
desideratur, et dum desideratur, excitatur. Besponsum externa quadam 
repulsae specie et tacita opis promissionemixtum,congruit sensui rogantis 
ex fide et imhecillitate mixto. 

^■KaTa( 3 r] 9 i, Capernaum lying upon the shore, and lower than Cana, 
where now they were. 


HEALING THE NOBLEMANS SON. 


129 


does not come down with, him, as he had prayed; hut 
sends him away with a mere word of assurance that it 
should go well with his child : ‘ Go thy way j thy son liveth ’ ^ 
(cf. Matt. viii. 13 ; Mark vii. 29). And the father was 
contented with that assurance ; he ^ believed the word tha t 
Jesus had sjpohen unto him, and he went his way,^ expecting 
to find that it should be done according to that word. 
The miracle was a double one—on the body of the absent 
child; on the heart of the present father; one cured of 
his sickness, the other of his unbelief. 

A comparison of the Lord’s dealing with this nobleman 
and with the centurion of the other Grospels is instructive. 
He has not men’s persons in admiration, who will not come, 
but only sends to the son of this nobleman (cf. 2 Kin. v. 
10, ii). Himself visiting the servant of that centurion.^ 
And there is more in the matter than this. Here, being 
entreated to come, He does not; but sends his healing 
word ; there, being asked to speak at a distance that word 
of healing, He rather proposes Himself to come ; for here, 
as Chrysostom explains it well, a narrow and poor faith is 
enlarged and deepened, there a strong faith is crowued 
and rewarded. By not going He increases this nobleman’s 
faith; by offering to go He brings out and honours that 
centurion’s humility. 

^ And as he was now going down, his servants met him, 
saying. Thy son liveth.^ Though faith had not struck its 
roots quickly in his soul, it would appear to have struck 
them strongly at last. His confidence in Christ’s word 
was so entire, that he proceeded leisurely homewards. It 
was not till the next day that he approached his house, 
though the distance between the two cities was not so 
considerable that the journey need have occupied many 

* For this use of as to he healed of any sore sickness, aU sickness 
being death beginning, see Isai. xxxviii. i; 2 Kin. i. 2. 

* Thus the Opm Lnperf. in Matt. Horn. xxii.: Ilium ergo contemsit, 
quern dignitas siiblevabat regalis; istum autem honoravit, quern conditio 
humiliabat servilis. 


130 


HEALING THE NOBLEMANS SON 


hours; but ‘he that believeth shall not make haste/ 
‘ Then inquired he of them the hour when he began to amend,^ ‘ 
to be a little better; for at the height of his faith the 
father had looked only for a slow and gradual amendment. 
‘And they said unto him-, Yesterday at the seventh hour the 
fever left himi It was not merely, they would imply, that 
at the hour they name there was a turning-point in the 
disorder, and the violence of the fever abated ; but it ‘ left^ 
him ’ altogether; as in the case of Simon’s wife’s mother, 
who, at Christ’s word, ‘ immediately arose and ministered 
unto them ’ (Luke iv. 39). ‘80 the father Jcnew that it was 

at the same hour in the which Jesus said unto him, Thy son 
liveth: ^ and himself believed and his whole house! This 
he did for all the benefits which the Lord had bestowed on 
him, he accepted another and the crowning benefit, even 
the cup of salvation; and not he alone; but, as so often 
happened, his conversion drew after it that of all who 
belonged to him ; for by consequences such as these God 
will bring us unto a consciousness of the manner in which 
not merely the great community of mankind, but each 
smaller community, a nation, or as in this case a family, 
is united and bound together under its federal head, shares 
in the good or in the evil which is his (cf. Acts xvi. 15, 
34; iviii. 8<). 

^ KofjLipoTepov icrxi=meliuscule se habuit. KofitpSg from kojusw —so in 
Latin, comptus, for adorned in any way. Thus in Arrian {JDiss. EpicL 
iii. 10) Kopil/iog ix*'C=helle hahes (Cicero) are the words of the physician 
to his patient that is getting better. 

^ Ammonius (w Cutend) : Ov yap airXwc, nvd's mq £rv)(Si>^ aTrrjWdyr] rrjg 
daOfJ'itag to Traidiov, dW dP.poov, (vg (patvtaOai pr) ^vjnog UKoXovOiav tlvai rb 
Pavpoy dXSd Trjg Ivspytiag rov Xpiarov. 

2 A beautiful remark of Bengel’s: Quo curatius divina opera et bene- 
ficia considerantur, eo plus nutrimenti fides acquirit. 

^ The Jews have their miracle, evidently founded upon, and in rivalry 
»f, this. Vitringa (De Synag. p. 147) quotes it: Quando segrotavit filius 
R. Gamalielis, duos misit studiosos sapientife ad R. Chanina, Dusae filium, 
lit per preces pro eo gratiam divinam implorarent. Postquam eos vidit, 
ascendit in coenaculum suum, Deumque pro eo oravit. Ubi vero de- 
ecendit, dixit, Abite, quia febris ilium jam dereliquit. ... Illi vero 
considentes, signate annotarunt illam horam, et quando reversi sunt ad 


HEALING THE NOBLEMANS SON, 


^31 

But did he not believe before? Was not this healing 
rtself a gracious reward of his faith ? Yes, he believed 
that particular word of the Lord’s; but this is something 
more, of faith, the entering into the number of Christ’s 
disciples, the giving of himself to Him as to the promised 
Messiah. Or, admitting that he already truly believed, 
there may be indicated here a heightening and augmenting 
of his faith. For faith may be true, and yet most capable 
of this increase. In him who cried, ‘ Lord, I believe; help 
Thou mine unbelief’ (Mark ix. 24), faith was indeed born, 
though as yet its actings were weak and feeble. After 
and in consequence of the first miracle of the water made 
wine, Christ’s ^disciples believed on Him’ (John ii. ii), 
who yet, being disciples, must have believed on Him 
already.* Apostles themselves exclaim, ‘Lord, increase 
our faith’ (Luke xvii. 5). The Israelites of old, who fol¬ 
lowed Moses through the Red Sea, must have already 
believed that he was God’s instrument for their deliverance; 
yet of them we learn that after the great overthrow of 
Pharaoh and his host, they ^ believed the Lord, and his 
servant Moses’ (Exod. xiv. 31). The widow whose son 
Elijah had raised from the dead, exclaims, ‘How by this I 
know thou art a man of God, and that the word of the 
Lord in thy mouth is truth ’ (1 Kin. xvii. 24). Knowing 
him for such before (ver. 18), she now received a new con¬ 
firmation of her faith (cf. John xi. 15 ; xiii. 19); and so 
we must accept it here. Whether, then, we understand 
that faith was first born in him now, or, being born 
already, received now a notable increase, it is plain in 

K. Gamalielem, dixit ipsis, Per cultum! Nec excessu nec defectu tem- 
poris peccastis, sed sic prorsus factum; ea enim ipsa liora dereliquit ipsura 
febris, et petiit a nobis aquam potandam. Cf. Lampe, Com. in Joh. vol. i. 
p. 813. 

1 Beda: Unde datur intelligi et in fide gradus esse, sicut et in aliis 
virtutibus, quibus est initium, incrementum, et perfectio. Hujus ergo 
fides initium habuit, cum filii salutem petiit: incrementum, cum credidit 
sermoni Domini dicentis, Pilius tuns vivit ; deinde perfectionem obtinuit, 
nuntiantibus servis. 


132 


HEALING THE NOBLEMAHS SON. 


either case that the Lord bj those words of his, ^ Except ye 
see signs and wonders ye will not believe/ ^ could not have 
intended to cast any slight on miracles, as a mean whereby 
men may be brought to the truth ; or having been brought 
to it, are more strongly established and confirmed in the 
same. 

One question before leaving this miracle claims a brief 
discussion, namely, whether this is the same history as 
that of the servant (Trats) of the centurion (Matt. viii. 5; 
Luke vii. 2) ; here repeated with only immaterial varia¬ 
tions. It would almost seem as if Irenjeus * had thought 
so; and some in the time of Chrysostom identified the 
two miracles, who himself, however, properly rejects this 
I'olling up of the two narratives into one. By Ewald too 
it is taken for granted, though without the smallest 
attempt at proof.^ There is nothing to warrant it, almost 
nothing to render it plausible. Not merely the external 
circumstances are widely different; the scene of that 
miracle being Capernaum, of this Cana; the centurion 
there a heathen, the nobleman here a Jew (for had he 
been other, it could not have past unnoticed, our Lord’s 
contact in the days of his fiesh with those who were not 

1 TMs passage and Matt. xii. 38-40; xyi. 1-4, Lave "been often urged 
by those who deny that Christ laid any special stress on his miracles, as 
proving his divine mission and authority. Those from St. Matthew, 
indeed, have been stretched into proofs that He did not even claim to do 
any. Thus by the modern rationalists, though the abuse of the passao-e 
is as old as Aquinas, who takes note of and rebukes it. But our Lord is 
as far as possible from denying the value of miracles, or affirming that 
He will do none (Matt. xi. 4, 5; John xiv. 11; xv. 24) ; but only that 
He will do none for them, for an evil and adulterous generation, which 
is seeking, not helps and confirmations of faith, but excuses and subter¬ 
fuges for unbelief. These works of grace and power are reserved for 
those who are receptive of impressions from them; seals which shall 
seal softened hearts; hearts utterly cold and hard would take no impres¬ 
sion from them, and therefore shall not be tried with them. 

* Con. Hcer. ii. 22: Filium centnrionis absens verbo curavit dicens 
Vade, filius tuus vivit. Yet centurmiis may well be only a slip of the 
pen or of the memory. 

® Die Johannischen Schriften, vol. i. p. 197; so too by Semler De 
Wette, Baur. 


HEALING TEE NOBLEMANS SON 


133 


of the chosen seed, always calling out special remark); 
that suppliant pleading for his servant, this for his son; 
there by others, in person here; the sickness there a 
paralysis, a fever here; but more decisive than all this, 
the heart and inner kernel of the two narratives is different. 
That centurion is an example of a strong faith, this noble¬ 
man of a weak faith ; that centurion counts that if Jesus 
will but speak the word, his servant will be healed, while • 
this nobleman is so earnest that the Lord should come 
down, because in heart he limits his power, and counts 
that nothing but his actual presence will avail to help his 
sick ; that other is praised, this rebuked of the Lord. So 
striking indeed are these differences, tliat Augustine ^ 
compares, but for the purpose of contrasting, the faith of 
that centurion, and the unbelief of this nobleman. Bishop 
Hall does the same. ^ How much difference,’ he exclaims, 

‘ was here betwixt the centurion and the ruler ! That 
came for his servant; this for his son. This son was not 
more above the servant, than the faith that sued for the 
servant surpassed that which sued for the son.’ Against 
all this, the points of likeness, and suggesting identity, 
are slight and superficial; as the near death of the 
sufferer, the healing at a distance and by a word, and the 
returning and finding the sick well. It is nothing strange 
that two miracles should have such circumstances as these 
in common. 

^ In Ei\ Joh. tract, xvi.: Videte distihctionem. Regulus iste Dominiim 
ad domum siiam descendere cupiebat; ille centurio indignum se esse 
dicebat. Illi dicebatur, Ego veniani, et curabo eum: huic dictum est, 
Vade. filius tuus vivit. Illi preesentiam promittebat, bunc verbo sanabat. 
Iste tamen praesentiam ejus extorquebat, ille se prsesentia ejus indignum 
esse dicebat. Hie cessum est elationi; illic concessum est bumilitati. 
Cf. Chrysostom, Horn, xxxv. in Joh. 


S. FTE 8 T MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES 

Ltjke V. 1 - 11 . 

I NHERE have been in all times those who have deemed 
- themselves bound to distinguish the incident here nar¬ 
rated from that recorded in St. Matthew (iv. i8) and St. 
Mark (i. 16-20). Thus Augustine^ finds the divergences 
in the narratives so considerable, that he can only suppose 
the event told by St. Luke to have first happened; our 
Lord then predicting to Peter that hereafter he should 
‘ catch men/ but not at that time summoning him to enter 
on the work; he therefore with his fellows continuing for 
a season in their usual employments ; till a little later, as 
by the two other Evangelists recorded, they heard the 
word of command, ^ EoUow Me,’ which they then at once 
obeyed, and attached themselves for ever to their heavenly 
Lord. 

Some difficulties, yet not very serious ones, in bringing 
the two accounts to a perfect agreement, every one will 
readily admit. But surely the taking refuge at once and 
whenever these occur, in the assumption that events 

' De Cons. Evang. ii. 17: Unde datur locus intelligere eos ex captura 
piscium ex more remeasse, ut postea fieret quod Matthaeus et Marcus 
narrant. . . . Tunc enim non subductis ad terram navibus tanquam cura 
redeundi, sed ita eum secuti sunt, tanquam vocantem ac jubentem ut 
eum sequerentur. Greswell in the same way {Dissert, vol. ii. Diss. 9) 
earnestly pleads for the keeping asunder of the two narratives. Yet any 
one who wishes to see how capable they are, by the expenditure of a 
little pains, of being exactly reconciled, has only to refer to Spanheim’s 
Dtih. Evang. vol. iii. p. 337; with whose conclusions Lightfoot {llarmony)^ 
Grotius, and Hammond consent. 


FIRST MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES. 135 

almost similar to one another, and with only slight and 
immaterial variations, happened to the same people two 
or three times over, is a very questionable way of escape 
from embarrassments of this kind; will hardly satisfy one 
who honestly asks himself whether he would admit it in 
dealing with any other records. In the extreme unlikeli¬ 
hood that events should thus repeat themselves a far more 
real difficulty is created, than any which it is thus hoped 
to evade. Let us only keep in mind the various aspects, 
various yet all true, in which the same incident will pre¬ 
sent itself from different points of view to different wit¬ 
nesses; the very few poihts in a complex circumstance 
which any narrative whatever can seize, least of all a 
written one, which in its very nature is limited; and we 
shall not wonder that two or three relators have brought 
out different moments, divers but diverse, of one and 
the same event. Rather we shall be grateful to that 
providence of God, which thus sets us oftentimes not 
merely in the position of one bystander, but of many; 
which allows us to regard the acts of Christ, every side of 
which is significant, from many sides; to hear of his dis¬ 
courses not merely so much as one disciple took in and 
carried away, but also that which sunk especially deep into 
the heart and memory of another. 

A work professing to treat of our Lord’s miracles ex¬ 
clusively has only directly to do with the narrative of St. 
Luke, for in that only the miracle appears. What followed 
upon the miracle, the effectual calling of four Apostles, 
belongs to the two parallel narratives as well—St. Luke’s 
excellently completing theirs, and explaining to us why 
the Lord, when He bade these future heralds of his grace 
to follow Him, should clothe the promise which went with 
the command in that especial shape, will malce you 
fishers of men.’ These words would anyhow have had 
their fitness, addressed to fishers whom He found casting 
their nets, and, little as they knew it, thus prophesying of 


TEE FIRST MIRACULOUS 


136 

their future work; ^ but they win a peculiar fitness, when 
He has just shown them what successful fishers of the 
mute creatures of the sea He could make them, if only 
obedient to his word. Linking, as was so often his cus¬ 
tom, the higher to the lower, and setting forth that higher 
in the forms of the lower. He thereupon bids them to 
exchange the humility of their earthly for the dignity of a 
heavenly calling; which yet He contemplates as a fishing 
still, though not any more of fishes, but of men; whom at 
his bidding, and under his auspices, they should embrace 
not less abundantly in the meshes of their spiritual net. 

But when we compare Johnfi. 40-42, does it not appear 
that three out of these four, Andrew and Peter certainly, 
and most probably John himself (ver. 35), had been already 
called ? Ho doubt they had then, on the banks of Jordan, 
been brought into a transient fellowship with their future 
Lord; but, after that momentary contact, had returned to 
their ordinary occupations, and only at this later period 
attached themselves finally and fully to Him, henceforth 
following Him whithersoever He went.^ This miracle most 
likely it was, as indeed seems intimated at ver. 8, which 
stirred the very depths of their hearts, giving them such 
new insights into the glory of Christ’s person, as prepared 
them to yield themselves without reserve to his service. 
Everything here bears evidence that not now for the first 
time He and they have met. So far from their betraying 
no previous familiarity, or even acquaintance, with the 
Lord, as some have afiSirmed, Peter, calling Him ^ Master,’ 
and saying, ^ Nevertheless at thy word, I will let down the 
net,’ implies that he had already received impressions of 
his power, and of the authority which went with his 

1 Auct. Oper. Imperf. in Matth. Horn. vi.: Futiira3 dignitatis gi’atiam 
artificii sui opere prophetantes. Augustine (Serm. Inedd., Berm. Iviii.); 
Petrus piscator non posuit retia, sed mntavit. 

^ It is often said that the other was, vocatio ad notitiam et familiari- 
tatem, or, ad fidem 5 this, ad apostolatum. See the remarks of Scultetus, 
Crit. Sac. vol. \i. p. 1956, 


DRAUGHT OF FISHES. 


137 


words. Moreover, the two callings, a first and on this a 
second, are quite in the manner of that divine Teacher, 
who would hasten nothing, who was content to leave 
spiritual processes to advance as do natural; who could 
bide his time, and did not expect the full com in the ear 
on the same day that He had cast the seed into the furrow. 
On that former occasion He sowed the seed of his word in 
the hearts of Andrew and Peter; which having done. He 
left it to germinate ; till now returning He found it ready 
to bear the ripe fruits of faith. Hot that we need there¬ 
fore presume such gradual processes in all. But as some 
statues are cast in a mould and at an instant, others only 
little by little hewn and shaped and polished, as their 
material, metal or stone, demands the one process or the 
other, so are there, to use a memorable expression of 
Donne’s, ‘/itsi’Ze Apostles ’ like St. Paul, whom one and the 
same lightning flash from heaven at once melts and 
moulds; and others who by a more patient process, here a 
little and there a little, are shaped and polished into that 
perfect image, which the Lord, the great master-sculptor, 
will have them finally to assume. 

‘And it came to joass, that, as the people pressed upon 
Him to hear the word of God, He stood hy the lahe of 
Gennesaretj ’ by that lake whose shores had been long ago 
designated by the prophet Isaiah as a chief scene of the 
beneficent activity of Messiah (Isai. ix. i, 2); and, standing 
there, He ‘saw two ships standing hy the lahe: hut the 
fishermen were gone out of them, and were ivashing their 
nets.^ And He entered into one of the ships, which was 

^ It is profitably remarked by a mystic writer of the Middle Ages, 
that this tbeir washicg and repairing (Matt. iv. 21) of their nets, after 
they had used them, ought ever to be imitated by all ^Jishers of men,' 
after they have cast in their nets for a draught; they too should seek 
carefully to purify and cleanse themselves from aught which in that very 
act they may have gathered of sin, impurities of vanity, of self-elation, 
or of any other kind; only so can they hope efiectually to use their nets 
for another draught. 


THE FIRST MIRACULOUS 


138 

Simonas, and jprayed him that he would thrust out a tittle 
from the land. And He sat down, and taught the people 
out of the ship. Now when He had left speaking, He said 
unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your 
nets * for a draught. This He says, designing Himself, the 
meanwhile, to take the fisherman in his net. For He, who 
by the foolish things of the world would confound the 
wise, and by the weak things of the world would confound 
the strong,^ who meant to draw emperors to Himself by 
fishermen, and not fishermen by emperors, lest his Church 
should even seem to stand in the wisdom and power of 
men rather than of God—He saw in these simple fishermen 
of the Galilsean lake the aptest instruments for his work.^ 
^ And Simon answering said unto Him, Master, we have 
toiled all the night,^ and have taken nothing j ’ but, with the 
beginnings of no weak faith already working within him, 
he adds, ‘ nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net ’— 
for these are not the words of one despairing of the issue; 
who, himself expecting nothing, would yet, to satisfy the 
Master, and to prove to Him the fruitlessness of further 
efforts, comply with his desire.® They are spoken rather 

^ Here SIktvov, from the old ^kuv (which re-appears in ^IcKog, a quoit), 
to throw; hut at Matt. iv. 18; Mark i. 16, specialized as aijKpiiiXrjarpov 
(=d/i^t/3oXj7), a casting net, as its derivation from d/i^i/3dXXw plainly 
.shows; in Latin, funda or jaculum. Its circular hell-like shape adapted 
it to the office of a mosquito net, to which Herodotus (ii. 95) tells us the 
Egyptian fishermen turned it; hut see Blakesley, Herodotus (in loc.); and 
my Synonyms of the New Testament, § 64. 

* Compare the call of the prophet Amos: was no prophet, neither 

was I a prophet’s son, hut I was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycamore 
fruit; and the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto 
me. Go, prophesy unto my people IsraeF (vii. 14, 15; cf. i Kin. xix. 19). 

^ See Augustine, Serm. ccclxxxi. 

* See Lampe {Comm, in Joh. vol. iii. p. 727) for passages in proof; and 
add this from Pliny (H. N. ix. 23): Vagantur gregatim fere cujusque 
generis squamosi. Capiuntur ante solis ortum: turn maxime piscium 
fallitur visus. Noctihus, quies: et illustrihus seque, quam die, cernunt. 
Aiunt et si teratur gurges, interesse capturao: itaque plures secundo 
tractu capi, quam prime. 

* Maldonatus: Non desperatione felicioris j actus hoc dicit Petrus, aut 
quod Christo vel non credat, vel ohedire nolit: sed potius ut majorem in 


DRAUGHT OF FISHES. 


139 


in the spirit of the Psalmist : ‘ Except the Lord build the 
house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord 
keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain ’ (Ps. 
cxxvii. i); as one who would say, ‘ We have accomplished 
nothing during all the night, and had quite lost hope of 
accomplishing anything; but now, when Thou biddest, we 
are sure our labour will not any longer be in vain.’ And 
his act of faith is abundantly rewarded; ^ And when they 
had this done, they enclosed a great multitude of fishes,^ so 
many indeed, that ‘ their net hrahe,^ and they hechoned to 
their ^partners in the other ship, that they should come and 
help them.^ 

It was not merely that Christ by his omniscience hnew 
that now there were fishes in that spot. We may not thus 
extenuate the miracle. Rather we behold in Him here 
the Lord of nature, able, by the secret yet mighty magic 
of his will, to guide and draw the unconscious creatures, 
and make them minister to the higher interests of his 
kingdom; we recognize in Him the ideal man, the second 
Adam, in whom are fulfilled the words of the Psalmist: 
^ Thou madest Him to have dominion over the works of 
thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet, . . . 
the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever 
passeth through the paths of the sea^ (Ps. viii. 6, 8). Of all 
this dominion bestowed on man at the first, no part 
perhaps has so entirely escaped him as that over the finny 
tribes in the sea; but He who ^ was with the wild beasts’ 
in the wilderness (Mark i. 13), who gave to his disciples 
power to ^take up serpents ’ (Mark xvi. 18), declared here 
that the fishes of the sea no less than the beasts of the 
earth were obedient to his will. Yet since the power by 

Christo fidem declaret; quod cum tota nocte laborantes nihil prehendisset, 
tamen ejus confidens verbis, iterum retia laxaret. 

1 On the nets breaking now, and not breaking, as it is expressly said 
they did not, on occasion of the second miraculous draught of fishes 
(John xxi. ii), and the mystical meaning which has been found in this, 
I would refer the reader to what there will be said. 

■7 


140 


THE FIRST MIRACULOUS 


wliicli He drew tliem tlien is the same that guides ever¬ 
more their periodic migrations, which, marvellous as it is, 
we yet cannot call miraculous, there is plainly something 
that differences this miracle, with another of like kind 
(John xxi. 6), and that of the stater in the fish’s month 
(Matt. xvii. 27), from Christ’s other miracles;—in that 
these three are not comings in of a new and hitherto nn- 
wonted power into the region of nature ; but coincidences, 
divinely brougJd about, between words of Christ and facts 
in that natural world. An immense haul of fishes, a piece 
of money in the mouth of one, are in themselves no 
miracles; ^ but the miracle lies in the falling in of these 
with a word of Christ’s, which has pledged itself to this 
coincidence beforehand. The natural is lifted up into the 
domain of the miraculous by the manner in which it is 
timed, and the ends which it is made to serve.^ 

^ And they came, and filled both the ships, so that they 
began to sinhl^ It was a moment of fear, not indeed 
because their ships were thus overloaded and sinking; 
but rather that now through this sign there was revealed 
to them something in the Lord, which before they had not 
apprehended, and which filled them with astonishment 
and awe. Peter, as so often, is the spokesman for all. 
He, while drawing the multitude of fishes into his net, 
has himself fallen into the net of Christ; ^ taking a prey, 

^ Thus Yarrell {Hist, of Biitish Fishes, vol, i. p. 125): ^At Brighton 
in June 1808, the shoal of mackerel was so great, that one of the boats 
had the meshes of her nets so completely occupied by them that it was 
impossible to drag them in. The fish and nets therefore in the end sunk 
together.’ 

^ See page 13. 

3 BvQ'iltaQai. The word occurs once besides in the New Testament, 
and then in a tropical sense (i Tim. vi. 9). 

^ The author of a striking sermon, numbered ccv. in the Benedictine 
Appendix to St. Augustine: Dum insidiatur Petrus gregibus mquoris, 
ipse in retia incidit Salvatoris. Fit de prsedone prseda, de piscatore 
piscatio, de pirata captivitas. — ‘Admire,’ exclaims Chrysostom, ‘the 
dispensation of the Lord, how lie draws each by the art which is most 
familiar and natural to him—as the INI agians by a star, so the fishermen 
by fish’—a thought which Donne in a sermon on this text enlarges thus: 


DRAUGHT OF FISHES. 


141 

lie has himself also been taken a prey; and the same man 
now as after, yielding as freely to the impulses of the 
moment, with the beginnings of the same quick spiritual 
insight out of which he was the first to recognize in his 
Lord the eternal Son of God, and to confess to Him as 
such (Matt. xvi. 16), can no longer, in the deep feeling of 
his own unholiness, endure a Holy One so near. He ^fell 
down at Jesus'* "knees, saying, Depart from me, for I am a 
sinful man, 0 Lord, For he was astonished, and all that 
were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had 
taken,* At moments like these all that is merely conven¬ 
tional is swept away, and the deep heart utters itself, and 
the deepest things that are there come forth to the light. 
And the deepest thing in man’s heart under the law is 
this sense of God’s holiness as something bringing death 
and destruction to the unholy creature. ^ Let not God 
speak with us, lest we die;’ this was the voice of the 
people to Moses, as ^they removed and stood afar off’ 
(Exod. XX. 18, 19). ^We shall surely die, because we 
have seen God’ (Judg. xiii. 22; cf. vi. 22, 23; Dan. x. 17; 
Isai. vi. 5 ; i Chron. xxi. 20). Below this is the utterly 
profane state, in which there is no contradiction felt 
between the holy and the unholy, between God and the 
sinner. Above it is the state of grace ; in which all the 
contradiction is felt, God is still a consuming fire, yet not 
any more for the sinner, but only for the sin. It is still 
felt, felt far more strongly than ever, how profound a gulf 

^The Holy Ghost speaks in such forms-and such phrases as may most 
work upon them to whom He speaks. Of David, that was a shepherd 
before, God says, He took him to feed his people. To those Magi of the 
East, who were given to the study of the stars, God gave a star to he 
their guide to Christ at Bethlehem. To those who followed Him to 
Capernaum for meat, Christ took occasion by that to preach to them of 
the spiritual food of their souls. To the Samaritan woman whom He 
found at the well, He preached of the water of life. To these men in 
our text, accustomed to a joy and gladness when they took great or 
great store of fish. He presents his comforts agreeably to their taste, 
they should be fishers still. Christ makes heaven all things to all men, 
that He might gain all.’ 


142 


Tim FIRST MIRACULOUS 


separates between sinful man and a boly God; but felt no 
less that this gulf has been bridged over, that the two can 
meet, that in One who shares with both they have already 
met. For his presence is the presence of God, but of God 
with his glory veiled; whose nearness therefore even sinful 
men may endure, and in that nearness may little by little 
be prepared for the glorious consummation, the open 
vision of the face of God; for this which would be death 
to the mere sinner, will be highest blessedness to him who 
had been trained for it by beholding for a while the 
mitigated splendours of the Incarnate Word. 

It would indeed have fared ill with Peter, had Christ 
taken him at his word, and departed from him, as He 
departed from others who made the same request (Matt, 
viii. 34; ix. i; cf. Job xxii. 17), but who made it in quite 
a different spirit from his. If Peter he this ‘ sinful man,’ 
there is the more need that Christ should be near him; 
and this He implicitly announces to him that He will be. 
And first He re-assures him with that comfortable ^ Fear 
not,’ that assurance that He is not come to destroy, but to 
save, which He had need to speak so often to the trembling 
and sin-convinced hearts of his servants (John vi. 20; 
Matt, xxviii. 5, 10; Luke xxiv. 8; Pev. i. 17). And that 
Peter may have less cause to fear, Christ announces to 
him the mission and the task which He has for him in 
store: ‘ From henceforth thou shalt catch men.’ In these 
words is the inauguration of Peter, and with him of 
his feUov/s, to the work of their apostleship. Such an 
inauguration, not formal, nor always in its outward acci¬ 
dents the same,—on the contrary, in these displaying an 
infinite richness and variety, such as reigns alike in the 
kingdoms of nature and of grace,—is seldom absent, when 
God calls any man to a great work in his kingdom. But 
Infinitely various in outer circumstances, in essence it is 
always one and the same. God manifests Himself to his 
future prophet, or Apostle, or other messenger, as He had 


DU AUGHT OF FISHES. 


H 3 


never done before; and in the light of this manifestation 
the man recognizes bis own weakness and insufficiency 
and guilt, as be bad never done before. He exclaims, ‘ I 
am slow of speech and of a slow tongue,’ or ‘ I cannot 
speak, for I am a child,’ or ^ I am a man of unclean lips,’ 
or as here, ^ I am a sinful man ; ’ falls on bis face, sets bis 
mouth, in the dust takes the shoes from off bis feet; and 
then out of the depth of this humiliation rises up another 
man, an instrument fitted for the work of God, such as he 
would have never been, if his own earthly had not thus 
paled before God’s heavenly; if the garish sun of this 
world had not thus set in him, that the pure stars of 
the higher world might shine out upon him. The true 
parallels to this passage, contemplated as such an inaugura¬ 
tion as this, are Exod. iv. 10-17; Isai. vi.; Jer. i. 4-10; 
Ezek. i.-iii.; Judg. vi. 11-23; Acts ix. 3-9; Dan. x.; Eev. 
i. 13-20. 

^ From henceforth thou shalt catch men.^ The Lord 
clothes his promise in the language of that art which was 
familiar to Peter; the fisherman is to caich men, as David, 
taken from among the sheep-folds, was to feed them ^ (Ps. 
Ixxviii. 71, 72). There is here a double magnifying of 
Peter’s future occupation as compared with his past.^ It 

' Origen finds in St. Paul’s Landicraft a like prophecy of his future 
vocation. The tent-maker shall become the maker of everlasting taber¬ 
nacles {In Num. Horn, xvii.): Unde mihi videtur non fortuito contigisse 
lit Petrus quidem et Andreas et filii Zebedaei, arte piscatores invenirentur, 
Paulus vero arte faber tabernaculorum. Et quia illi vocati ab arte 
capiendorura piscium, mutantur et fiunt piscatores hominum, dicente 
Domino; Venite post me, et faciara vos piscatores hominum: non dubiuni 
•quin et Paulus, quia et ipse per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum 
vocatus apostolus est, simili artis sum transformations mutatussit: ut 
sicut illi ex piscatoribus piscium, piscatores hominum facti sunt, ita et 
iste a faciendis tabernaculis terrenis, ad. cmlestia tabernacula construenda 
tralatus sit. Construit enim cmlestia tabernacula docens unumquemque 
viara salutis, et beatorum in cmlestibus mansionum iter ostendens. 

* So in the Christian hymn: 

Te piscantem Piscatoris Cuncta linquis, nave spreta, 

A d capturm melioris Temporalis mundi met& 

Usura traxit gratia. Indices ut omnia. 


144 


THE FIRST MIRACULOUS 


is men and not poor fislies wMch liencefortli he shall fcake; 
and he shall take them for life, and not, as he had hitherto 
taken his meaner prey, only for death. So mnch is 
involved in the word of the original,^ which thus tnrns of 
itself the edge of Julian’s malignant sneer,^ who observed 
that ^ the Galilsean ’ did indeed most aptly term his Apos¬ 
tles ^fishers;’ for as the fisherman draws out his prey from 
the waters where they were free and happy, to an element 
in which they cannot breathe, but must piesently expire, 
even so did these.^ But the word employed—and we 
must presume that it found its equivalent in the Aramaic 
—does with a singular felicity anticipate and exclude 
such a turn. Peter shall take men, and take them for 
life, not for death; quite another catching of men from 
that denounced by the prophet Jeremiah (v. 26) and by 

^ Zwypei'fn-, from ?woc and dypEvoj, to take alive (Num. xxxi. 15 ; Dent. 
XX. 16; Josk. ii. 13, LXX); and ^uoypsta, the prey which is saved alive 
(Num. xxi. 35 ; Dent. ii. 24). Of. Homer, II. Z, 46, where one pleading 
for his life exclaims, 

Zwypff, ’Arpfog vis, nv dha Si^at diron a. 

It appears as if the old Italic Version took ^(vyptw in its other derivation 
(from and dyttpou), for we find the passage quoted by St. Ambrose 
and other early Fathers, Eris vivificans homines; but the Vulgate more 
correctly. Homines eris capiens. See Suicer, Thes. s. v. l^yp^uj.. 

^ His words are quoted by Theophanes {Horn, v.): Zw/) piv toIq- 

h'vdpoig TO vSmp, OdvaTog £e o d!]p' ti o?) rovro ianv ol paOrjral dpa 

Tou ’lijaov Tovg dvOpioTrovg dypn'jovrig Sui rov Kppvyparog, ry dirujXelgL Kal ry 
Gai’drcp, wg Tovg lyOuag, TrapaSiSoaari. See Suicer, T 7 ies. 8. V. dXtfvg. Origen 
supposes (Con. Cels. i. 62), that out of a confused remembrance of this 
passage Celsus styled the Apostles ‘ publicans and sailors ’ Uav-ag). But 
this inexactness is of a piece with his ignorance of the number of the 
Apostles (he speaks of them as ten), an ignorance singular enouoh in 
one who undertook a formal refutation of Christianity. 

3 In one aspect indeed the death of the fish, which follows on its with¬ 
drawal from the waters, finds its analogy in the higher spiritual world. 
The man, drawn forth by these Gospel nets from the worldly sinful 
element in which before he lived and moved, does die to sin; but only 
that by this death he may rise to a higher life in Christ. Origen (Horn. 
XVI. in Jtrem.f. ’Ekuiwi 01 ixGi/ig 01 dXoyoi dvsXOoi/reg tv ratt, aayyvaiQ 
diruf'vlinKnvai Qdvarov, ovx'i diaS^xophyg Z.ioyg rov Odvarov* 6 di avWricpGelg 
VTTO tCjv d\ieu)v 'irjrrov, K((i dveXOoJV dn'o rrjg OaXdarrrjg, Kai avrbg plv arro- 
OvyrTKt.1, dTroOi'yrTKfi Sf r<p Konpcp, uTroGvijcncn ry dpapr'K}, kuI jaerd ro aTToQavHV 
Ttp k 6 (tp<p Kai ry djiapTia, ^looTvoiurai virb rov Xoyov TovQeov,Kai dvaXap[Sdvti 
dXXyv Zitjyv. 


DRAUGHT OF FISHES. 


HS 

Habakkuk (i. 14, 15). Those that were wandering, rest¬ 
less and at random, throngh the deep nnqniet waters of 
the world, the smaller falling a prey to the greater,^ and 
all with the weary sense as of a vast prison, he shall 
embrace within the safe folds and recesses of the same 
Gospel net; ^ which if they break not throngh, nor leap 
over, they shall at length be drawn up to shore, out of the 
dark gloomy waters into the bright clear light of day, 
that so they may be gathered into vessels for eternal life 
(Matt. xiii. 48). 

^ Augustine (Enarr. in Rs. Ixiv. 6); Mare enim in figura dicitur secu- 
luni hoc, falsitate amarum, procellis turbulentum: ubi homines cupidi- 
tatibus perversis et pravis facti sunt velut pisces invicem se devorantes. 
Ambrose; Et bene apostolica instrumenta piscandi retia sunt j quae non 
captos perimunt, sed reservant, et de prof undo ad lumen extrahunt, et 
fluctuantes de infernis ad superna perducunt. 

2 Augustine {Serm. Inedd. Serm. lix.): Nam sicut rete quos continet 
vagari non patitur, ita et fides errare, quos colligit, non permittit: et 
sicut ibi captos sinu quodam perducit ad navim, ita et hie congregates 
gi’emio quodam deducit ad requiem. Yet this title of ^ fishers ’ itself also 
fails to set out the whole character of the Christian ministry; sets out 
only two moments of it in any strength, the first and the last,—the 
Church’s missionary activity, as the enclosing within the net, and the 
bringing safely to the final kingdom, as the landing the contents of 
the net upon the shore (Matt. xiii. 48). All which is between it leaves 
unexpressed, and yields therefore in fitness, as in frequency of use, to the 
image borrowed from the work of the shepherd; has given us no such 
names as ‘pastor’ and ‘flock’ to enrich our Christian language. That 
of ‘shepherd’ expresses all which ‘fisher’ leaves out, the habitual daily 
care for the members of Christ, the pecuVmm, after they have been 
brought into the fellowship of the Church. It was, therefore, fitly said 
to Peter, ‘Thou shall catch men,'' before it was said, ‘Feed my sheep;’ 
and each time though not a different commission, yet a different side of 
the commission, is intended; he shall be both evangelist and pastor. 
Jeremy Taylor gives the matter a slightly different turn: ‘In the days of 
the patriarchs, the governors of the Lord’s people were called shepherds. 
In the days of the Gospel they are shepherds still, but with the addition 
of a new appellative, for now they are called fishers. Both the callings 
were honest, humble, and laborious, watchful and full of trouble, but now 
that both the titles are conjunct, we may observe the symbol of an 
implicit and folded duty. There is much simplicity and care in the 
shepherd’s trade; there is much craft and labour in the fisher’s, and a 
prelate is to be both full of piety to his flock, careful of their welfare, and 
also to be discreet and wary, observant of advantages, laying such bait? 
for the people as may entice them into the nets of Jesiis’s discipline.’ 


THE FIRST MIRACULOUS 


146 

It is not for nothing that the promise here clothes 
itself in language drawn from the occupation of the fisher, 
rather, for instance, than in that borrowed from the 
nearly allied pursuits of the hunter. The fisher more 
often takes his prey alive; he draws it to him, does not 
drive it from him; ^ and not merely to himself, but draws 
all which he has taken to one another; even as the Church 
brings together the divided hearts, the fathers to the 
children, gathers iuto one fellowship the scattered tribes 
of men. Again, the work of the fisher is one of art and 
skill, not of force and violence 5^ so that Tertullian^ finds 

^ Spanteim {Dub. Evang. vol. iii. p. 350): Non Dominiis 

Tocatos voluit, sed piscatores, non homines abigentes a se prsedam, sed 
colligentes. Yet the image still remains, even in the New Testament, 
open to an opposite use; thus in the tKt^KOfieuog koI SeXea^ojusuog of Jam. i. 
14 are allusions to the fish drawn from its safe hiding places, and enticed 
by the tempting bait {piXmp) to its destruction: cf. Ezek. xxix. 4, 7. 

^ So Ovid {Halieut): Noster in arte labor positus: cf. ^ Cor. xii. 16: 
v 7 rcipx<ov Travorpyogj doXip vjidg iXa( 3 or. And Augustine {De Util. Jejun. 
ix.): Quare Apostoli neminem coegerunt, neminem impulerunt ? Quia 
piscator est, rotia mittit in mare, quod incurrerit, trahit. Venator autem 
silvas cingit, seutes excutit; terroribus undique multiplicatis cogit in retia. 
Ne hac eat, ne illic eat: inde occurre, inde csede, inde terre; non exeat, 
non effugiat. Thus hunting is most often an image used in malam partem 
(Ps. X. 9; XXXV. 7). Nimrod is ‘ a mighty hunter before the Lord ’ (Gen. 
X. 9), where to imagine any other hunting but a tyrannous driving of 
men before him is idle; as Augustine rightly (De Civ. Dei, xvi. 4): Quid 
significatur hoc nomine quod est Venator, nisi animalium terrigenarum 
deceptor, oppressor, extinctor ? Luther, in his Letters, speaks of a hunting 
party at which he was present: ^Much it pitied me to think of the mystery 
and emblems which lieth beneath it. For what does this symbol signify, 
but that the Devil, through his godless huntsmen and dogs, the bishops 
and theologians to wit, doth privily chase and snatch the innocent poor 
little beasts ? Ah, the simple and credulous souls came thereby far too 
plain before my eyes.’ Yet it is characteristic that the hunting, in which 
is the greatest coming out of power, should of men be regarded as the 
nobler occupation; thus Plato {De Legg. vii. p. 823 e; cf. Plutarch, De 
Sol. Anim. 9) approves it, while fishing he would forbid as an dpybg Oppa 
and ipajg ov (^(podpa tXsvO^pLog (Becker, Charicles, vol. i. p. 437). 

® Adv. Marc. iv. 9 : De tot generibus operum quid utique ad pisca- 
turam respexit ut ab ilia in Apostolos sumeret Simonem et filios Zebedsei? 
Non enim simplex factum videri potest, de quo argumentum processurum 
erat, dicens Petro trepidanti de copiosa indagine piscium: Ne time, abhinc 
enim homines eris capiens. Hoc enim dicto, inteliectum illis suggerebat 
adirapleto) prophetiae; se earn esse qui per Hieremiam pronuntiarat, Ecce 


DRAUGHT OF FISHES. 


147 


it tliis miracle a commencing fulfilment of Jer. xvi. 16, 
‘ Beliold, I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and 
they shall fish them.’ Those words, it is true, are rather 
a threat than a promise. It is, however, quite in the 
spirit of the New Covenant to fulfil a threatening of the 
Old, yet so to transform in the fulfilling, that it wears a 
wholly different character from that which it wore when 
first uttered. There is now a captivity which is blessed, 
blessed because it is deliverance from a freedom which is 
full of woe,—a ‘ being made free from sin and becoming 
servants to God,’ that so we may have eur ‘ fruit unto 
holiness, and the end everlasting life’ (Rom. vi. 22). But 
the promise here might be brought with more unques¬ 
tionable propriety into relation with Ezek. xlvii. 9, 10, and 
the prophecy there of the fishers that should stand on 
Engedi, and of the great multitude of fish wi fch which the 
healed waters should abound.* 

But if Christ’s Evangelists are as fishers, those whom they 
draw to Him are as fish. This image, so great a favourite 
in the early Church, probably did not find its first motive 
in this saying of our Lord; but rather in the fact that 
through the waters of baptism men are first quickened,^ 
and only live as they abide in that quickening element 
into which they were then brought. The two images 
indeed cannot stand together, mutually excluding as they 
do one another; for in one the blessedness is to remain 

ego raittam piscatores miiltos, et piscabuntur illos. Denique relictis 
naviculis sequuti sunt eum ; ipsiim intelligentes, qui coeperat facere quod 
edixerat. Cf. Cyril of Alexandria, in Cramer’s Catena. 

^ Tlieodoret gives rightly the meaning of the passage: Asyft tx^v^v 
TrXi/jOff Tovro ysvijcTSctOai to vSvjp' Kai aXuag E^eiv iroXXovg' ttoXXoi yap oi Cia 
Twv vSaTiov TovTiov elg ffojTtjpiav Orjpojfievotf TroXXot Se icai oi rriv aypuu 
Tavrrjv OrjpivHv TrtTTiaTtvpkvoi. 

* Tertullian (De Bapt. i.): Sed nos pisciculi secundum IxOvv nostrum 
Jesum Christum in aqua nascimur; nec aliter quam in aqua permanendo 
ealvi sumus. And Chrysostom on these words, ^ I will make you fishers 
of men,’ exclaims, ^ Truly, a new method of fishing! for the fishers draw 
out the fishes from the waters, and kill those that they have taken. But 
we fling into the waters, and those that are taken are made alive.* 


148 


THE FIRST MIRACULOUS 


in the waters, in the vivifying element, in the other to 
be drawn forth from them into the i^nrer and clearer air. 
In one Christ is the Tish,^ in the other the chief Fisher¬ 
man. As being Himself this great ‘ Fisher of men ’ He is 
addressed in that grand Orphic hymn attributed to the 
Alexandrian Clement, in words which may thus be trans¬ 
lated: 

‘ Fisher of mortal men, 

Them that the saved are, 

Ever the holy fish 

From the wild ocean 

Of the world’s sea of sin 

By thy sweet life Thou enticest away/ 

‘ And when they had hrought their ships to land, they for- 
sooh all, and followed Him,^ or, as St. Mark has it, ‘ left 
their father Zehedee in the ship with the hired servants, and 
followed Himl^ Bnt what, some ask, was that ‘atV which 
Hhey for sooh f that they should afterwards magnify it so 
much, saying, ‘ Behold, we have forsahen all, and followed 
Thee : what shall we have therefore ’ (Matt. xix. 27) ? 
Whatever it was, it was their all, and therefore, though 
no more than a few poor boats and nets, it was much; for 
love to a miserable hovel may hold one with bands as hard 
to be broken as bind another to a sumptuous palace; 
seeing it is the worldly affection which holds, and not the 
world; and the essence of the renunciation lies not in the 

* Augustine {De Civ. Dei, xviii. 23), giving tlie well-known Greek 
anagram of IXGYS, adds: In quo nomine mystice intelligitur Ckristus, 
eo quod in kujus mortalitatis abysso, velut in aquarum profunditate vivus, 
hoc est, sine peccato esse potuerit. In the chasing away of the evil 
spirit by the fish’s gall (Tob. 'nii. 2, 3), a type was often found in the 
early Church, of the manner in which, when Christ is near, the works of 
the devil are destroyed. Thus Prosper of Aquitaine: Christus .... 
piscis in sua passione decoctus, cujus ex interioribiis remediis quotidie 
illuminamur et pascimur. 

* Crashaw (Steps to the Temple") has a neat and serious epigram here* 

^ Thou hast the art on’t, Peter, and canst tell 
To cast thy nets on all occasions well. 

When Christ calls, and thy nets would have thee stay, 

To cast them well’s to cast them quite away.’ 


DRAUGHT OF FISHES, 


149 


more or less wMcL. is renounced, but in the spirit in 
which the renunciation is carried out. These Apostles 
might have left little, when they left their possessions ; but 
they left much, and had a right to feel that they had left 
much, when they left their since eithei for rich 

man or for poor what is the limit of desires ? 

A word or two may fitly find place here upon the 
symbolic acts of our Lord, whereof, according to his own 
distinct assurance, we here have one. The desire of the 
human mind to embody the truth which it strongly feels 
and greatly yearns to communicate to others, in acts 
rather than by words, or it may be by blended act and 
word, has a very deep root in our nature, which always 
strives after the concrete; and it manifests itself not 
merely in the institution of fixed symbolic acts, as the 
anointing of kings, the delivery of a sod, the breaking of 
a cake at the old Roman marriages, the giving and 
receiving of a ring at our own (cf. Ruth iv. 7, 8); but more 
strikingly yet, in acts that are the free products at the 
moment of some creative mind, which has more to utter 
than it can find words to be the bearers of, or would utter 
it in a manner more expressive and emphatic than these 
permit. This kind of teixhing, however frequent in 
Scripture (i Kin. ii. 30, 31; xxii. Isai. xx. 3, 4; 

Jer. li. 63, 64; John xxi. 19-22; Acts xiii. 51), pertains 
not to it alone, nor is it even peculiar to the East, although 
there most entirely at home; but everywhere, as men have 

1 Augustine {Enarr. iii. in Ps. ciii. 17) : Multum dimisit, fratres mei, 
multum dimisit, qui non solum dimisit quidquid habebat, sed etiam quid- 
quid babere cupiebat. Quis enim pauper non turgescit in spem seculi 
bujus ? quis non quotidie cupit augere quodbabet ? Ista cupiditas praecisa 
est. Prorsus totum mundum dimisit Petrus, et totum mundum Petrus 
accipiebat. And Gregory tbe Great, following in tbe same line {Horn, v. 
in Evangi ): Multum ergo Petrus et Andreas dimisit, quando uterque 
etiam desideria babendi dereliquit. Multum dimisit, qui cum re possessa 
etiam concupiscentiis renuntiavit. A sequentibus ergo tanta dimissa 
sunt quanta a non sequentibus concupisci potuerunt. Cf. Clemens of 
Alexandria, Quis Dives Salvusf 20, vol. ii. p. 94^; Potter s ed. 

* Intended no doubt as an incorporation in act of Deut. xxxiii. 17. 


150 FIRST MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES, 

felt strongly and deeply, and wonld fain make others 
share in their feeling, they have had recourse to such a 
language as this, which so powerfully brings home its 
lesson through the eyes to the mind. The noonday lantern 
of Diogenes expressed his contempt for humanity far more 
effectually than all his scornful words ever would have 
done it. As the Cynic philosopher, so too the Hebrew 
prophets, though in quite another temper, would often¬ 
times weave their own persons into such parabolic acts, 
would use themselves as a part of their own symbol; and 
this, because nothing short of this would satisfy the 
earnestness with which the truth of God, whereof they 
desired to make others partakers, possessed their own 
souls (Ezek. xii. 1-12; Acts xxi. ii). And thus not this 
present only, but many other of our Lord’s works were 
such an embodied teaching,^ the incorporation of a doctrine 
in an act; meaning much more than met the natural eye, 
and only entirely intelligible when this significance has 
been recognized in them (Matt. xxi. 18, 19; John xxi. 19). 
The deeds of Him, who is the Word, are themselves also, 
and are intended to be, words for us.^ 

^ Lampe; In umbra prsemonstrabatur quam laeto guccesau in ornni 
labore, quern in nomine Dei auscepturi essent, piscaturam prsecipue mysti- 
cam inter gentes instituentes, gavisuri sint. Grotius, who has often 
traits of delicate and subtle exposition, finds real prophecy in many of 
the subordinate details here: Libenter igitur hie veteres sequor, qui 
proecedentis histojise hoc putant esse to dXXTjjopovfJisvov, Apostolos non 
suapte industria sed Christi imperio ac virtute expansis Eyangelii retibus 
tantam facturos capturam, ut opus habituri sint subsidiaria multorum 
evayyfXi(TT{ov opera; atque ita impletum iri non unam navem, Judasorum 
scilicet, sed etalteram gentium, sed quarum navium futura sit arcta atque 
indivulsa societas. Cyril of Alexandria (see Cramer, Catena^ in loc.) 
had anticipated this; Augustine {Serm. cxxxvii. 2); and Theophylact 
(in loc.); this last tracing in their night of fruitless toil the time of the 
law, during which there was no kingdom of God with all men pressing 
into it. 

^ Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, xxiv.) : Nam quia ipse Christus Yerbum 
est, etiam factum Verbi verbum nobis est. Ep. cii. qu. 6: Nam sicut 
humana consuetude verbis, ita divina potentia etiam factis loquitur. 


4 » TUB STILLING OF THE TBUdBBST 
Matt. viii. 23-27 ; Make iv. 35-41 j Ltjke Tiii. 22-25. 

T he tliree Evangelists, wlio relate tliis history, consent 
in placing it immediately before the healing of the 
possessed in the country of the Gadarenes. There is not 
so perfect a consent in respect of the events which imme¬ 
diately preceded it ; and the best harmonists forsake the 
order and succession of these as given by the first, in 
favour of that offered by the other two; as it does not 
seem that by any skill tLey can be perfectly reconciled. 

It was evening, the evening, probably, of that day on 
which the Lord had spoken all those parables recorded in 
Matt. xiii. (cf. Mark iv. 35), when, seeing great multitudes 
about Him still, ‘He gave commandment to depart unto the 
other side’ of the lake, to the more retired region of Persea. 
^And when they had sent away the multitude,’ which, how¬ 
ever, was not effected without three memorable sayings to 
three who formed part of it (Matt. viii. 19-22; cf. Luke ix. 
57—62), ^they tooh Him even as He was’^ (that is with no 
preparation for a yoyage) ^ in the shii’ But before the 
voyage was accomplished, ‘behold there^- arose a great 
tempest'^ in the sea.’ ^ A sudden and violent squall, such as 

^ 'Qg r/^=sine ullo ad iter apparatu. 

2 wliich St. Matthew here employs, must he used very rarely 

indeed for a storm at sea; neither the lexicons nor commentaries give a 
single other example. It is the technical word, with or without yrjg, for 
an m’^Aquake, being often so employed in the New Testament (Matt, 
xxiv. 7; xxviii. 2; Rev. xvi. 18 ; cf. Amos i. i); and is used of any 
other great shaking, literal or figurative. AalXa^p, which the other two 
Evangelists employ (Markiv. 37 ; Luke viii. 23 ; cf. 2 Pet. ii. 17), belongs 
properly to the of poetry, but, like other words of the same charac- 


152 


THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST. 


these small inland seas, surrounded with mountain gorges, 
are notoriously exposed to, descended on the bosom of the 
lake: and the ship which bore the Saviour of the world 
appeared to be in imminent peril, as, humanly speaking, 
no doubt it was; for these men, exercised to the sea many 
of them from their youth, and familiar with all the changes 
of that lake, would not have been terrified by the mere 
shadow and ghost of a danger. But though the danger 
was so real, and was ever growing more urgent, until HJie 
waves heat into the ship, so that now it 'was their 

Master, weary and worn out with the toils of the day, 
continued sleeping still; He was, according to details 
which St. Mark alone has preserved, Hn the hinder part of 
the ship, asleep upon a pillow; ’ and was not roused by all 
the tumult and confusion incident on such a moment. 
We behold in Him here exactly the reverse of Jonah 
(Jon. i. 5, 6); the fugitive prophet asleep in the midst of a 
like danger out of a dead conscience, the Saviour out of 
a pure conscience—Jonah by his presence making the 
danger, Jesus yielding the pledge and the assurance of 
deliverance from the danger.^ 

But the disciples understood not this. It may have 
been long before they ventured to arouse Him; yet at 
length the extremity of the peril overcame their hesitation, 
and they did so, not without exclamations of haste and 
terror; as is evidenced by the double ^ Master, Master,^ of 
St. Luke. This double compellation, as it scarcely needs 
to observe, always marks a special earnestness on the part 
of the speaker; and as God’s speakings’to man are ever of 
this character, it will often be found in them (Gen. xxii. 11; 

ter, found its way into tlie prose of the koivi) ^idXeKTog. Hesycbius 
defines it dv^ixov (7v<sTpo<pri fuO’ vtrov: but darkness as well as rain sbould 
be included in the definition of it; in Homer it is constantly eps^v}^, or 
KtXaivr]. Tbe storm-wind by which Elijah was rapt from earth to heaven 
is XaiXaxf/ TTvpoQ (2 Kin. ii. II, LXX). 

1 Jerome (in loc.) : Hujus signi typum in Jona legimus, quando 
ceteris periclitantibus ipse securus est, et dormit, et suscitatur; et imperio 
ac Sacramento passionis suae liberat suscitantes. 


THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST. 


153 


Exod. iii. 4; I Sam. iii. 10; Luke x. 41 ; Acts ix. 4); as 
in man’s also to God (Matt. vii. 22 ; xxvii. 46). In St. 
Mark, the disciples rouse their Lord with words almost of 
rebuke, as if He were unmindful of their safety, ‘ Master, 
carest Thou not that we perish ? ’ though in this their ‘ we ’ 
including no doubt their beloved Lord as well as them¬ 
selves.^ ^ And He saith unto them. Why are ye fearful, 0 
ye of little faith ? ’—from St. Matthew it would appear, 
first blaming their want of faith, and then pacifying the 
storm; though the other Evangelists make the blame not 
to have preceded, but to have followed, the allaying of the 
winds and waves. Probably it did both : He spoke first 
to his disciples, calming with a word the tempest in their 
bosoms; and then, having allayed the tumult of the 
outward elements. He again turned to them, and more 
deliberately rebuked their lack of faith in Him.^ Still let 
it be observed that He does not, according to St. Matthew, 
call them ‘ without faith,^ but ^ of little faith ; ’ and St. 
Mark’s, ^ How is it ye have no faith ? ’ must be modified ' 
and explained by the milder rebuke recorded in the other 
Evangelists. They were not wholly without faith; for, 
believing in the midst of their unbelief, they turned to 
Christ in their fear. They had faith, but it was not quick 


^ On the different exclamations of fear which different Evangelists put 
into the mouth of the disciples, Augustine says well (De Cons. Evang. ii. 
24): Una eademque sententia est excitantium Dominum, volentiumque 
fialvari: nec opus est quserere quid horum potius Christo dictum sit. 
Sive enim aliquid horum trium dixerint, sive alia verba qum nullus 
Evangelistarum commemoravit, tantumdem tamen valentia ad eandem 
sententise veritatem, quid ad rem interest ? And again (28): Per hujus- 
modi Evangelistarum locutiones varias, sed non contrarias, rem plane 
utilissimam discimus et pernecessariam; nihil in cuj usque verbis nos 
debere inspicere, nisi voluntatem, cui debent verba servire : nec mentiri 
quemquam, si aliis verbis dixerit quid ille voluerit, cujus verba non dicit; 
ne miseri aucupes vocum, apicibus quodammodo literarum putent ligan- 
dam esse veritatem, cum utique non in verbis tantum, sed etiam in ceteris 
omnibus signis animorum, non sit nisi ipse animus inquirendus. Cf. 66, 
in fine. 

^ Theophylact: UpCjrov iravaaQ tov xngo)va rijs \pvxVQ avT^v, Ton Xva 
Kai Tov rijc OaXdaarjs, 


154 


THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST. 


and lively; it was not at hand, as the Lord’s question, 
^ Where is your faith ? ’ (Luke viii. 25) sufficiently implies. 
They had it, as the weapon which a soldier has, but cannot 
lay hold of at the moment when he needs it the most. 
Their sin lay not in seeking help of Him; for this indeed 
became them well; but in the excess of their terror, ‘ Why 
are ye so fearful in their counting it possible that the 
ship which bore their Lord could ever perish. 

‘ Then He arose, and rebuTced the winds and the sea ; and 
there was a great calm.^ Csesar’s confidence that the bark 
which contained him and his fortunes could not sink, forms 
the earthly counterpart to the heavenly calmness and con¬ 
fidence of the Lord. We must not miss the force of that 
word ‘ rebuJced,^ preserved by all three Evangelists; and as 
little the direct address to the furious elements, ‘ Peace, be 
still,’ 2 which St. Mark only records. To regard this as a 
mere oratorical personification would be absurd; rather is 
there here, as Maldonatus truly remarks, a distinct tracing 
up of all the discords and disharmonies in the outward 
world to their source in a person, a referring them back to 
him, as to their ultimate ground; even as this person can 
be no other than Satan, the author of all disorders alike 
in 4 he natural and in the spiritual world. The Lord 
elsewhere ‘rebuJces’ a fever (Luke iv. 39), where the same 
remarks will hold good. Hor is this rebuke unheard or 
unheeded; for ^ not willingly ’ was the creature thus made 
‘subject to vanity’ (Eom. viii. 20). Constituted to be 
man’s handmaid at the first, it is only reluctantly, and 
submitting to an alien force, that nature rises up against 
him, and becomes the instrument of his hurt and harm. 
In the hour of her wildest uproar, she knew the voice of 

^ OvTu) Lt\oi. Calvin: Qua particula notat eos extra modum pave- 
Bcere; • • • • qnemlibet vero timorem non esse fidei contrarium, inde 
patet, quod si nihil metuimus, ohrepit supina carnis securitas. 

* StwTra, TTKpifiomo. Cf. Ps. cvi. 9 : ‘ He rebuked {iniriiititTe, LXX) the 
Led Sea also; ’ although there, as in a poem, the same stress cannot be 
laid on the word as here. 


THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST, 


155 


Him who was her rightful Lord, gladly returned to her 
allegiance to Him, and in this to her place of proper service 
to that race of which He had become the Head, and whose 
lost prerogatives He was reclaiming and reasserting once 
more.^ And to effect all this, his word alone was sufficient; 
He needed not, as Moses, to stretch a rod over the deep; 
He needed not, as his servant had needed, an instrument 
of power, apart from Himself, with which to do his mighty 
work (Exod. xiv. 16, 21, 27) ; but at his word only Hhe 
wind ceased, and there was a great calm.’ ^ 

The Evangelists proceed to describe the moral effect 
which this great wonder exercised on the minds of those 
that were in the ship;—it may be, also on those that were 
in the ‘ other little ships,’ which St. Mark has noted a,s 
sailing in their company: ^ The men marvelled, saying. 
What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea 
obey Him ? ’ an exclamation which only can find its answer 
in another exclamation of the Psalmist, ‘ 0 Lord God of 
Hosts, who is like unto Thee ? Thou rulest the raging of 
the sea: when the waves thereof arise. Thou stillest them ’ 
(Ps. Ixxxix. 8, 9^). We see here, no doubt, the chief 

^ A notable specimen of tbe dexterity with whicli a neological inter¬ 
pretation may be insinuated into a book of geography occurs in Roar’s 
FalcisHna, p. 59, in many respects a useful manual. Speaking of this lake, 
and the usual gentleness of its waters, he adds, that it is from time to 
time disturbed by squalls from the neighbouring hills, which yet ‘ last 
not lony, and are not very perilous (Matt. viii. 23-27).’ What his 
reference to this passage means is more largely expressed b}-^ Kuinoel (in 
loc.). Dr. Thomson, who himself witnessed a violent storm on this lake, 
which lasted for three days, gives quite a different account. ‘ To under¬ 
stand,’ he says, ‘ the causes of these sudden and violent tempests, we must 
remember that the lake lies low [KarsjS// \a7\a\p, Luke viii. 23], six 
hundred feet lower than the ocean, that the vast and naked plateaus of 
Jaulan rise to a great height, spreading backward to the wilds of Hauran, 
and upward to the snowy Hermon j that the watercourses have cut out 
profound ravines and wild gorges, converging to the head of the lake, 
and that these act like gigantic funnels to draw down the winds from the 
mountains ’ (TAe Land and the Book, part ii. ch. xxv.). 

* iiot, as some propose, from yd\a, to express the soft milky 
colour of the calm sea, but from yeXdw. So Catullus, describing the 
gently-stirred waters,—leni resonant plangore cachinni. 

* Tertullian {Adv. Marc. iv. 20) : Quum transfretat, Psalmus expungi* 


156 TEE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST. 


ethical purpose to which, in the providence of God who 
ordered all things for the glory of his,Son, this miracle 
was intended to serve. It was to lead his disciples into 
thoughts ever higher and more awful of that Lord whom 
they served, more and more to teach them that in nearness 
to Him was safety and deliverance from every danger. 
The danger which exercised, should likewise strengthen, 
their faith,—who indeed had need of a mighty faith, since 
God, in St. Chrysostom’s words, had chosen them to be 
the athletes of the universe.^ 

An old expositor has somewhat boldly said, ‘ This power 
of the Lord’s word, this admiration of them that were with 
Him in the ship, holy David had predicted in the psalm, 
saying, They that go down to the sea in ships, that do 
business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord, 
and his wonders in the deep ” ’ (Ps. cvii. 23-30). And as 
in the spiritual world the inward is ever shadowed forth 
by the outward, we may regard this outward fact but as 
the clothing of an inward truth which in the language 
of this miracle the Lord declares unto men. He sets 
Himself forth as the true Prince of peace (Isai. ix. 6-9), 
the speaker of peace to the troubled and storm-stirred 
heart of man, whether the storms that stir it be its own 
inner passions, or life’s outward calamities and temptations. 
Thus Augustine, making application of all parts of the 

tur, Dominus, inquit, super aquas multas [Ps. xxxix. 3] : quum undas 
freti discutit, Abacuc adimpletur/Dispargens, inquit, aquas itinere [Hab. 
hi. 15]: quum ad minas ejus eliditur mare, Naum quoque absolvitur; 
Cumminans, inquit, mari, et arefaciens illud [Nab. i. 4], utique cum 
ventis quibus inquietabatur. 

1 Bengel: Jesus babebat scbolam ambulantem, et in ea scbola multo 
solidius instituti sunt discipuli, quani si sub tecto unius collegii sine ulla 
solicitudine atque tentatione vixissent. — A circumstance wbicb baa 
perplexed some, that, apparently, tbe Apostles were never baptized, 
except some of them with John’s baptism, bas been by others curiously 
explained, that, as the children of Israel were baptized into Moses 
in tbe Eed Sea (i Cor. x. 2), so they were in this storm baptized into 
Christ. Tertullian {De Bapt. 12): Alii plane satis coacte injiciunt, 
tunc Apostolos baptism! vicem impl^sse, quum in navicula fluctibua 
adspersi operti sunt. 


THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST. 


157 


miracle; ‘We are sailing in this life as througli a sea, 
and the wind rises, and storms of temptations are not 
wanting. Wlience is this, save because Jesus is sleeping 
in thee ? If He were not sleeping in thee, thou wouldest 
have calm within. But what means this, that Jesus is 
sleeping in thee, save that thj faith, which is from Jesus, 
is slumbering in thine heart ? What shalt thou do to be 
delivered ? Arouse Him, and say. Master, we perish. He 
will awaken ; that is, thy faith wiU return to thee, and 
abide with thee always. When Christ is awakened, 
though the tempest beat into, yet it will not fill, thy ship ; 
thy faith will now command the winds and the waves, and 
the danger will be over.’ ^ 

We shall do no wrong to the literal truth of this and 
other of Christ’s miracles, by recognizing the character at 

^ And again, Enarr. iti Ps. xciii. 19:8! cessaret Dens, et non misceret 
amaritudines felicitatibus seculi, oblivisceremiir eiim. Sed ubi angores 
niolestiarum faoiunt fluctus aniinse, fides ilia quae ibi dormiebat, excitetur. 
Tranquillum enim erat, quando dormivit Cliristus in mari: illo dormiente, 
tempestas orta est, et coeperimt periclitari. Ergo in corde Christiano 
et tranquillitas erit et pax, sed quamdiu vigilat fides nostra: si autein 
dormit fides nostra, periolitamur. Sed quomodo ilia navis cum flue- 
tuaret, excitatus est Cbristus a fluctuantibus, et dicentibus, Domine, 
perimus: surrexit ille, imperavit terapestatibiis, imperavit fluctibus, 
cessavit periculum, facta est tranquillitas; sic et te cum turbant concupi- 
scentiee malae, persuasiones malae, fluctus sunt, tranquillabuntur. Jam 
desperas, et putas te non pertinere ad Dominum; Evigilet fides tua, excita 
Christum in corde tuo ; surgente fide, jam agnoscis ubi sis; ... . Evigi¬ 
lante Christo tranquilletur cor tuum, ut ad portum quoque pervenias. 
Thus again (In Eo. Joh. tract, xlix.): Tides tua de Christo, Christus est 
in corde tuo. . . . Intrant venti cor tuum, utique ubi navigas, ubi hanc 
vitam tanquam procellosum et periculosum pelagus traiisis; intrant venti, 
movent fluctus, turbant navim. Qui sunt venti ? Audisti convicium, 
irasceris; convicium ventus est, iracundia fluctus est: periclitaris, dis- 
ponis respondere, disponis maledictum maledicto reddere, jam navis pro- 
pinquat naufragio; excita Christum dormientem. Ideo enim fluctuas, 
et mala pro mails reddere praeparas, quia Christus dormit in navi. In 
corde enim tuo somnus Christi, oblivio fidei. Nam si excites Christum, 
id est, recolas fidem, quid tibi dicit tanquam vigilans Christus in corde 
tuo ? Ego audivi, Daemonium habes, et pro eis oravi 5 audit Dominus 
et patitur; audit aervus et indignatur. Sed vindicari vis. Quid""enim, 
ego jam sum vindicatus ? Cum tibi haec loquitur fides tua, quasi impera- 
tur ventis et fluctibus, et fit tranquillitas magna. Cf, Sei'm. Ixiii.; Encvrr 
m Pa. Iv. 8 ; and Enarr. ii. in Ps. xxv. in init. 


158 THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST. 

once symbolic and prophetic, wliicli many of them also 
bear, and this among the nnmber. The sea is evermore in 
Scripture the symbol of the restless and sinful world (Dan. 
vii. 2, 3; Rev. xiii. i ; Isai. Ivii. 2o). As the kernel of 
the old humanity, Noah and his family, was once contained 
in the Ark which was tossed on the waters of the deluge, 
so the kernel of the new humanity, of the new creation, 
Christ and his Apostles, in this little ship. And the 
Church of Clirist has evermore resembled this tempested 
bark, the waves of the world raging horribly around it, 
yet never prevailing to overwhelm it,—and this because 
Christ is in it (Ps. xlvi. 1-3; xciii. 3, 4); who roused by 
the cry of his servants, rebukes these winds and these 
waters, and delivers his own from their distress.^ We have 
in Ezekiel a magnificent description of a kingdom of this 
world set forth under the image of a stately and glorious 
galley (xxvii. 4-9); but that with all the outward bravery and 
magnificence which it wears utterly perishes : ^ thy rowers 

^ Tertullian (De Bapt. 12): Ceterum navicula ilia figuram Ecclesiae 
preoferebat, quod in mari, id est seculo, fluctibus, id est persecutionibua 
et tentationibus, inquietatur, Domino per patientiam velut dormiente, 
donee orationibus sanctorum in ultimis suscitatus, compescat seculum et 
tranquillitatem suis reddat. Ambrose: Arbor qusedam in navi est crux 
in Ecclesia, qua inter tot totius seculi blanda et perniciosa naufragia 
incolumis sola servatur. Compare a beautiful passage in the Clementine 
Homilies (Coteler. Patt. Apostt. vol. i. p. 609), beginning thus: ’EoiKiv 
yap oXov to Trpaypa rijg iKKXri'Tiag vrji /uiyaAy, dia aepoSpov xfiixdi’og dvSpag 
(pfpovay Ik ttoXXu/v tottcjv oi/rac, Kai piav rii'd dyaOrjg PaaiXtiag ttoXiv oIkhv 
Q' s-Xovragy k. t. X. The image of the world as a great ship, whereof 
God is at once the maker and the pilot, was familiar to the Indians (Philo- 
stratus, Be Vita Apollonii, iii. 3 5 ; Von Bohlen, Das Alte Indien), and 
the same symbolic meaning lay in the procession of Egyptian priests 
bearing the sacred ship (the navigiuiea auratum, Curtius, iv. 7), full of 
the images of the gods (Creuzer, Symholik, vol. ii. p. 9, 3rd edit.). All 
this was recognized in early Christian Art, where the Church is con¬ 
tinually set forth as a ship, against which the personified winds are 
fighting (Christl. Kunst-Symholik, p. 159). Aringhi describes an old 
seal-ring in which the Church appears as this ship, sustained and sup¬ 
ported by a great fish in the sea beneath (Christ the IxeYS, according to 
Ps. Ixxii. 17 , Aquila), whilst on its mast and poop two doves are sitting: 
80 that the three Clementine symbols, the ship, the dove, and the fish, 
appear here united in a single group. 


THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST. 159 

have brought thee into gretto waters; the east wind hath 
broken thee in tbe midst of the seas;’ and they that hoped 
in it, and embarked in it their treasures, wail over its wreck 
with a bitter wailing (ver. 26-36); this kingdom of God, 
this Church of Christ, meanwhile, showing by comparison 
but as the insignificant fishing-boat which any wave might 
engulf, rides triumphantly over all, and brings its precious 
freight safely into haven at the last. 


5. THE DEMONIACS IN THE COUNTRY OF THE 
GADARENES. 

IVIatt. viii. 28-34.; Maek v. 1-20; Ltjke viii. 26-39. 

T he consideration of this, the most important, and, in 
many respects, the most perplexing of all the demoniac 
cnres in the Hew Testament, will demand some prefatory 
remarks on the general subject of the demoniacs* of Scrip¬ 
ture. It is a subject of which the difficulty is very much 
enhanced by the fact that,—as with some of the spiritual 
gifts, the gift of tongues, for example,—the thing itself, if 
it still survives among us, yet does so no longer under the 
same name, nor with the same frequency and intensity as 
of old. We are obliged to put together, as best we can, 
the separate and fragmentary notices which have reached 
us, and must endeavour out of them to frame such a scheme 
as will answer the demands of the different phenomena; 
we have not, at least with certainty, the thing itself to 
examine and to question, before our eyes. 

It is, of course, easy enough to cut short the whole in¬ 
quiry, and to leave no question at all, by saying these 

1 Tlie most common name in Scripture for one tbus possessed is 
caifiovii^ofievog (Matt. iv. 24., and often). Besides this, daijjnvKrOdg (Mark 
V. 18; Luke yiii. 36); dvOpujTrng h' TTVfVfiari aKaBapTip (Mark i. 23); 

TTVfvpa d-Kadaprov (Acts viii. 7) ; Satpovia (Luke Tiii. 27) ; 

dvGpoTTog tx^'^ TTvevpa ^at/xortou dKa 0 «prou (Luke iv. 3 3) ; daipovi6\T]7rrog 
(Justin Martyr, Apol 2) ; while ivtpyovptvog is the more ecclesiastical word. 
Other more general descriptions, Kara^waaTevSptvog virb tov Sia(B6\ov 
(Acts X. 38) ; ox^ovpsvog VTTO TTvevpaTcov aKciOupTiov (Luke vi. l8 ; Acts 
V. 16). In classic Greek, one under the power of an evil dalpuuv was 
said Saipovdv (^schylus, Choe'phorcn^ 564), KOKobaipovavy and the 
state was called KaKocaipov'iay not being, however, precisely a similar 
condition. 


THE DEMONIACS OF TEE GADARENES. l6i 


demoniacs were persons wliom we at this day should call 
insane—epileptic, maniac, melancholic. This has been 
often said,' and the oftener perhaps, because there is a 
partial truth in the assertion that these possessions were 
bodily maladies. There was no doubt a substratum of 
disease, which in many cases helped to lay open the suf¬ 
ferer to the deeper evil, and upon which it was superin¬ 
duced : ^ so that cases of possession are at once classed 
with those of various sicknesses, and at the same time dis¬ 
tinguished from them, by the Evangelists; who thus at once 
mark the connexion and the difference (Matt. iv. 24; viii. 
16 ; Mark i. 34). But the scheme which confounds these 
cases with those of disease, and, in fact, identifies the two, 
does not, as every reverent interpreter of God’s word 
must own, exhaust the matter; it cannot be taken as a 
satisfying solution of the difficulties it presents ; and this 
for more reasons than one. 

And first, our Lord Himself uses language which is not 
reconcilable with any such explanation. He everywhere 
speaks of demoniacs not as persons merely of disordered 
intellects, but as subjects and thralls of an alien spiritual 
might; He addresses the evil spirit as distinct from the 
man; ‘ Hold thy peace, and come out of him ’ (Mark i. 
25). An d the unworthy reply, that He fell in with and 
humoured the notions of the affiicted in order to facilitate 
their cure,^ is anticipated by the fact that in his most con- 

1 As by Semler in Germany, Comm, de Dcsmoniacis quorum in Novo 
Teslammto Jit Mentio, Halse, 1770-1779 ; by Hugh Farmer in England, 
Essay on the Demmiacs of the New Testament, Loudon, 1775. 

2 Origen (in Motth. tom. xiii. 6) finds fault with some (larpoi he calls 
them) who in his day saw in the youth mentioned Matt, xyiii. 14, only 
one afflicted with the falling sickness. He himself runs into the opposite 
extreme, and will see no nature there, because they saw nothing but 
nature. 

3 Not to say that such treatment had been sure to fail. Schubert, in 
his book, full of wisdom and love. Die Krankheiten und Storungen der 
menschlichen Seele, several times observes how fatal ^ all giving in to a 
madman’s delusions is for his recovery ,* how sure it is to defeat its^ own 
objects. He is living in a world of falsehood, and what he wants is not 


I&2 THE DEMONIACS IN THE COUNTRY 


fidenfial discourses with his disciples He uses exactly the 
same language (Matt. x. 8 ; and especially xvii. 21, ‘ This 
kind goeth nofc out but by prayer and fasting The ah 
legiance we owe to Christ as the King of truth, who came, 
not to fall in with men’s errors, but to deliver men out of 
their errors, compels us to believe that He would never 
have used language which would have upheld and con¬ 
firmed so serious an error in the minds of men as the 
belief in Satanic influences, which did not in truth exist. 
For this error, if it was an error, was so little an innocuous 
one, such as might be left to drop naturally away; did, on 
the contrary, reach so far in its consequences, entwined its 
roots so deeply among the very ground-truths of religion, 
that He would never have suffered it to remain at the 
hazard of all the misgrowths which it could not fail to 
occasion. 

And then, moreover, even had not the moral interests 
at stake been so transcendent, our idea of Christ’s absolute 
veracity, apart from the value of the truth which He com¬ 
municated, forbids us to suppose that He could have spoken 
as He did, being perfectly aware all the while that there 
was no corresponding reality to justify the language which 
He used. And in this there is no making a conscience 
about trifles, nor any losing sight of that figurative nature 
of all our words, out of which it results that so much 
which is not literally true, is yet the truest, inasmuch as 
it conveys the truest impression,—no requiring of men to 

more falsehood, but some truth—the truth indeed in love, but still only 
the truth. The greatest physicians in this line in England act exactly 
upon this principle. 

1 It is hardly necessary to observe, that by this ‘ going out ’ that is 
not implied, which Amobius {Adv, Gent. i. 4.5) in the rudest manner 
expresses, when he speaks of gens ilia mersorum in visceribus dsemonum. 
The notion of a ventriloquism such as this, of a spirit having his lodging 
in the body of a man, could only arise from a gross and entire confusion of 
the spiritual and material, and has been declared by great teachers of the 
Church not to be what they understand by this language (see Pet. 
Lombard, Sentent. ii. dist. 8). The German ‘besessen^ involves a 
lesitzens^ as eyKaOsKtaQat^ yet not as a mechanical local possession. 


OF TBE GADARENES. 


163 


examine the etymologies of their words before they venture 
to nse them. It would have been quite a different thing 
for the Lord to have fallen in with the popular language, 
and to have spoken of persons under various natural 
aflictions as ‘ possessed/ supposing He had found such a 
language current, but now no longer, however it might 
once have been, vividly linked to the idea of possession by 
spiiits of evil. In this there had been nothing more than 
in our speaking of certain forms of madness as lunacy. 
We do not thus imply our belief, however it may have 
been with others in time past, that the moon has wrought 
the harm ; ^ hut finding the word current, we use it r and 
this the more readily, since its original derivation is so 
entirely lost sight of in our common conversation, its first 
impress so completely worn off, that we do not thereby 
even seem to countenance an error. But suppose with this 
same disbelief in lunar influences, we were to begin to 
speak not merely of lunatics, but of persons on whom the 
moon was working, to describe the cure of such, as the 
ceasing of the moon to afflict them; the physician to 
promise his patient that the moon should not harm him 
any more, would not this be quite another matter, a direct 
countenancing of error and delusion ? would there not 
here be that absence of agreement between thoughts and 
words, in which the essence of a lie consists? Now 
Christ does everywhere speak in such a language as this. 
Take, for instance, his words, Luke xi. 17-26, and assume 
Him to have known, all the while He was thus speaking, 
that the whole Jewish belief of demoniac possessions was 
utterly baseless, that Satan exercised no such power over 
the bodies or spirits of men, that, indeed, properly speaking, 
there was no Satan at all, and what should we have here 
for a King of truth ? 

And then, besides this, the phenomena themselves are 

^ There are cases of lunamhulism, in which, no doubt, it has influence; 
but they are few and exceptional (see Schubert, p. 113). I am speaking 
of using the terra to express all forms of mental unsoundness. 

8 


164 THE DEMONIACS IN THE COUNTRY 

such as no hypothesis of the kind ayails to explain, and 
they thus hid ns to seek for some more satisfying solution. 
For that madness was not the constituent element in the 
demoniac state is clear, since not only are we without the 
slightest ground for supposing that the Jews would have 
considered all maniacs, epileptic or melancholic persons, to 
be under the power of evil spirits; but we have distinct 
evidence that the same malady they did in some cases at¬ 
tribute to an evil spirit, and in others not; thus showing 
that the malady and possession were not identical in their 
eyes, and that the assumption of the latter was not a mere 
popular explanation for the presence of the former. Thus, 
on two occasions they bring to the Lord one dumb 
(Matt. ix. 32), or dumb and blind (Matt. 22), and in both 
instances the dumbness is traced up to an evil spirit. Yet 
it is plain that they did not consider all dumbness as 
having this root; for in the history given by St. Mark (vii. 
32) of another deaf and dumb, the subject of Christ’s 
healing power, it is the evident intention of the Evan¬ 
gelist to describe one labouring only under a natural 
defect; with no least desire to trace the source of his 
malady to any demoniacal influence. Signs sufficiently 
clear, no doubt, distinguished one case from the other. 
In that of the demoniac there probably was not the out¬ 
ward hindrance, not the still-fastened string of the tongue; 
it was not the outward organ, but the inward power of 
using the organ, which was at fault. This, with an entire 
apathy, a total disregard of all which was going on about 
him, may have sufficiently indicated that the source of 
his malady lay deeper than in any merely natural 
cause. But, whatever may have been the symptoms 
which enabled those about the sufferers to make these 
distinctions, the fact itself of their so discriminating 
between cases of the very same malady, proves decisively 
that there were not certain diseases which, without more 
ado, they traced up directly to Satan; but that they did 
designate by this name of nossession. a condition which 


OF THE GADARENES. 165 

wliile it was very often a condition of disease, was also 
always a condition of mncli more than disease. 

But what was the condition which onr Lord and his 
Apostles signalized by this name ? in what did it differ, 
upon the one side, from madness,—upon the other, from 
wickedness ? It will be impossible to make any advance 
toward the answer, without saying something, by way of 
preface, on the scriptural doctrine concerning the kingdom 
of evil, and its personal head, and the relation in which he 
stands to the moral evil of our world. Alike excluding, on 
the one side, the Manichsean error, which would make evil 
eternal as good, and so itself a god,—and the pantheistic, 
which would deny any true reality to evil at all, or that it 
is anything else than good at a lower stage, the unripe, 
and therefore still bitter, fruit,—the Scripture teaches the 
absolute subordination of evil to good, and its subsequence 
of order, in the fact that the evil roots itself in a creature, 
and in one created originally pure, but the good in the 
Creator. Yet, at the same time, it teaches that the oppo¬ 
sition of this evil to the will of God is most real, is that of 
a will which does truly set itself against his will; that the 
world is not as a chess-board on which God is in fact playing 
both sides of the game, however some of the pieces may be 
black, and some white; but that the whole end of his 
government of the world is the subduing of this evil; that 
is, not abolishing it by main force, which were no true 
victory, but overcoming it by righteousness and truth. 
And from this one central will, alienated from the will of 
God, the Scripture derives all the evil in the universe; all 
gathers up in a person, in the devil, who has a kingdom, 
as God has a kingdom—a kingdom with its subordinate 
ministers,—Hhe devil and his angels.’^ This world of 

* Tlie devil is never in Scripture da'ifiiov or Saifxoviov, nor his inferior 
niinisters Siaf3oXol. Aainojv and Sai/xoviot', the latter in the New Testa¬ 
ment of far the most frequent occurrence, are not perfectly equivalent j 
out there is more of personality implied in dalfiiov than Sat[i6viov. Other 
names are nviviia TrovijpSvf Tcvidpa aKaQapTOVf irvtvpa Saipojaov aKaOdpToVf 


166 THE DEMONIACS IN THE COUNTRY 


onrs stands not isolated, not rounded and complete in itself, 
but in living relation ’witli two worlds,—a higlier, from 
which all good in it proceeds,—and a lower, from^which 
all evil. It thus comes to pass that the sin of man is con¬ 
tinually traced up to Satan; Peter says to Ananias, ^ Why 
hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost’ 
(Acts v. 3) ? and St. John, of Judas Iscariot, ‘ the devil 
having now put into his heart to betray Him ’ (John xiii. 
2 ; cf. I John iii. 8; John viii. 44); the Scripture not by 
such language as this denying that the evil of men is truly 
their evil, but affirming with this, that it grounds itself on 
an anterior evil. It is their evil, since an act of their will 
alone gives it leave to enter. To each man the key is 
committed, with the charge to keep closed the gate of his 
soul; and it is only through the negligent ward which he 

and at Matt. viii. 16 tliey are simply ra imviiara. The word 
(=.^aj7juwr) is derived either from oo'w, scio, and then signifies ‘the know¬ 
ing,’ the full of insight (in oldest Greek ddfiujv), while to hnow is the 
special prerogative of spiritual beings (on <pp67nfioi koI Sai’ipoveg fjaav^ 
Plato, Crat. 398 b; oh scientiam nominati, Augustine, De Civ. Dei, ix. 
20) ; or else from in its sense of to divide ; the Saipovsc are then the 
distributors, the dividers and allotters of good and of evil to men, ar d 
caifiiov would thus be very much the same as Molpa, derived from fxspi c, 
a portion. And this derivation is perhaps preferable, in that ever a 
feeling of the fateful is linked with the word. In classic use the word is 
of much wider significance than in scriptural, embracing all intermediate 
beings between men and the very highest divinities, whether the deified 
men of the golden age, or created and inferior powers; and, as well as 
baipovioc, is a middle term, capable of being applied to the high'fest and 
the lowest, and first deriving from its adjunct a good or an evil signifi¬ 
cance ; thus we have dyaOoSaipujr, KOKodaipiDv. The classical passage on 
the subject is in Plato’s Symp. 20a, 203. Already in Augustine’s time 
{De Civ. Dei, lix. 19) the heathen themselves used daipojv only in malam 
partem, which he attributes to the influence which the Church's use had 
spread even beyond its own limits ; though a tendency to this use had 
made itself felt before. Thus if used of a god, it was oftener of a god in 
his evil workings on men than in his good. The same appears more 
distinctly in daiixonoc, which is never one under happy influences of the 
heavenly powers; but always one befooled, betrayed, impelled or led by 
them to his ruin. On the Greek idea of the Saipovsg, see Creuzer’s 
masterly discussion, Symholik,^Qxt III. pp. 719-748, 3rd edit.; Solger, 
Nachgelassene Schriften,Yo\. ii. pp. 657-675; Nagelsbach, Homer. Theologie, 
p. 72, sq.; and, suggesting quite another derivation than that hitherto 
recognized. Pott, Etymol, Forsdiungen, 2nd edit. vol. ii. p. 947. 


OF THE GADARENES. 


167 

lias kept that evil has found admission there. At the same 
time it is the existence of a world of evil hejond and with¬ 
out our world, which attaches to any negligence or trea¬ 
chery here such fatal and disastrous results. 

This being so, the question which presents itself is this, 
namely, what peculiar form of Satanic operation does the 
Scripture intend, when it speaks of men as possessed, or 
having devils. Is their evil ethical, or is it merely 
physical ? Merely physical it certainly is not. Doubtless 
the suffering of the demoniac often was great; yet we 
should err, if we saw in him, as in the victims of ghastly 
and horrible diseases, only another example of the mighty 
W'oe which Satan has brought in upon our race. ISTor yet, on 
the other hand, is his evil purely ethical; we have in'him 
something else than merely a signal sinner, a foremost 
servant of the devil, who with heart and will and waking 
consciousness is doing his work; for this, whatever his 
antecedent guilt may have been, and often, I should 
imagine, it had been great, the demoniac evidently is not. 
But what in him strikes us the most is the strange con¬ 
fusion of the physical and the psychical, each intruding into 
the proper domain of the other. There is a breaking up 
of all the harmony of the lower, no less than of the higher, 
life; the same discord and disorganization manifests it¬ 
self in both. Nor does the demoniac, like the wicked, 
stand only in near relation to the kingdom of Satan as a 
whole. It is with him as if of the malignant spirits of the 
pit one had singled him out for its immediate prey; as 
when a lion or a leopard, not hunting in the mass a herd 
of flying antelopes, has fastened upon and is drinking out 
the life-blood of one. 

But the awful question remains. How should any have 
sunken into this miserable condition, have been entangled 
BO far into the bands of the devil, or of his ministers ? We 
should find ourselves altogether upon a -wrong track, did 
we conceive of the demoniacs-as the worst of men, and their 


168 THE DEMONIACS IN THE COUNTRY 


possession as tlie plague and penalty of a wickedness in 
w^hich they had greatly exceeded others. Eatlier we must 
esteem the demoniac one of the unhappiest, but not, of 
necessity, one of the guiltiest of our race.^ So far from 
this, the chief representatives and organs of Satan, false 
prophets and antichrists, are never spoken of in this lan¬ 
guage.^ We all feel that Judas’ possession, when Satan 
entered into him (John xiii. 27), was specifically different 
from that of one of the unhappy persons who were the sub¬ 
jects of Christ’s healing power. Or, to borrow an illustra¬ 
tion from the world of fiction, none would speak of lago 
as SaL/jLovi^ 6 jjLsvo 9 , however all the deadliest malignity of 
hell was concentrated in him; we should trace much closer 

^ This is exactly Heinrotli’s exaggeration, tracing up, as lie does, insanity 
in every case to foregoing sin; and not this alone, hut affirming that none 
who had not fallen deeply away from God could be liable to this inflic¬ 
tion, that in fact they are the outermost circle of them who have obeyed 
the centrifugal impulses of sin. But every one who knows what manner 
of persons have been visited by this terrible calamity, and also what 
manner of persons have not, at once revolts against this doctrine thus 
stated. Still Heinroth’s unquestionable merit remains, that more dis¬ 
tinctly, I believe, than any before him, he dared to say out that such 
cases stood in a different, and oftentimes far nearer, connexion to the 
kingdom of evil than a fever or a broken limb. The mere fact that 
insanity is on all sides allowed to demand a moral treatment, the physical 
remedies being merely secondary and subsidiarjq is sufficient to put it in 
wholly another class from every other disease. The attempt to range it 
with them is the attempt, natural enough in those who know not the 
grace of God in Christ, to avoid looking down into the awful deeps of 
our fallen nature. For a list of Heinroth’s works, almcst all bearino- 
upon this subject, see the Conversations-Lexicon under his name. In 
dealing with this subject he had the inestimable advantage of being at 
once a theologian and physician. For Schubert’s more qualified opinion 
on the same subject see p. 37 of his work already referred to. 

So the accusation of the people, ‘ Thou hast a devil ’ (John vii. 20 ; 
viii. 48, 52; X. 20), was quite different from, and betrayed no such 
deadly malignity as, that of the Pharisees, that He cast out devils by 
Beelzebub (JMatt. xii. 24). That first was a common coarse blasphemy, 
a stone flung at random ; this, which charged Him with being in wiilino- 
and conscious alliance with the prince of evil, was on the very verge of 
being the sin against the Holy Ghost (ver. 31). The distinction 
between wicked men and demoniacs was clearly recognized in the early 
Church; it had its excommanications for the former, its exorcists for 
the hitter. 


OF THE GADABENES. 


169 


analogies to this state in some aspects of Hamlet’s life. 
Greek tragedy supplies a yet apter example. It is the 
noble Orestes, whom the ‘ dogs of hell ’ torture into mad¬ 
ness ; the obdurate Clytemnestra is troubled on account of 
her deed with no maddening spectres from the unseen 
world. Thus, too, in actual life, the horror and deep 
anguish of a sinner at the contemplation of his sin may 
have helped on this overthrow of his spiritual life,—anguish 
which a more hardened sinner would have escaped, but 
escaped it only by being a worse and more truly devilish 
man.^ We are not then to see in these cases of possession 
the deliberate giving in to the satanic will, of an utterly 
lost soul, but the still recoverable wreck of what might 
once have been a noble spirit.^ 

And, consistently with this, we find in the demoniac the 
sense of a bondage in which he does not acquiesce, of his 
true life absolutely shattered, of an alien power which has 
mastered him wholly, and now is cruelly lording over him, 
and ever drawing further away from Him in whom only 
any created intelligence can find rest and peace. His state 
is, in the most literal sense of the world, ‘ a possession : ’ 
another is ruling in the high places of his soul, and has cast 
down the rightful lord from his seat; and he knows this ; 
and out of his consciousness of it there goes forth from him 
a cry for redemption, so soon as ever a glimpse of hope is 
afforded, an unlooked-for Eedeemer draws near. This 

1 See the article Besessem, by Dierenger, in Ascbbacb’s Allgemeim 
Kirchen-Lexicon, a Roman Catholic work. 

* Dallseus {De Cult. Bel Lot. i. p. 64) draws well the distinction : 
Etsi quicunque sub peccati jugo sunt, omnes diaboli servi sint, latum 
tamen est inter peccatorem et energumenon discrimen. In ilium daemon 
agit efficacia, ut sic dicam, morali, in hunc pliysicd sive naturali. Illius 
animum objectis ad peccandum illecebris pervenit, hujus corpus et 
corporis sensus vel interiores vel etiam exteriores turb.at ,* ilium vitiis, 
hunc morbis subigit j denique ilium volentem et consentientem, hunc 
invitum et repugnantem tenet ac, ut loquiinur, possidet. Alia peccaton, 
alia energumeno comparata sunt remedia. Illius vitiis imbutus animus 
ratione, exhortatione, verbo denique evangelico curandus est, hujus corpus 
vi superiori et dono divinitus dato liberandum. 


170 THE DEMONIACS IN THE COUNTRY 

aor.se of misery, this yearning after deliverance, is that, 
in fact, which constituted these demoniacs subjects for 
Christ’s healing power. Without it they would have been 
as little subjects of this as the devils, in whom evil has had 
its perfect work, in whom there is nothing for the divine 
grace to take hold of;—so that in their case, as in every 
other, faith was the condition of healing. There was in 
them a spark of higher life, not yet trodden out; which, 
indeed, so long as they were alone, was but light enough to 
reveal to them their darkness; and which none but the very 
Lord of life could have fanned again into a flame. But 
He who came ‘ to destroy the works of the devil,’ as He 
showed Himself lord over purely physical evil, a healer of 
the diseases of men, and lord no less over purely spiritual 
evil, a deliverer of men from their sins,—manifested Him¬ 
self also lord in these complex cases partaking of the 
nature of either, ruler also in this border land, where these 
two regions of evil join, and run so strangely and inex¬ 
plicably one into the other. 

Yet while thus ^ men possessed with devils ’ is in no wise 
an equivalent expression for surpassingly wicked men, 
born of the serpent seed, of the devil’s regeneration, and 
so become his children (Acts xiii. lo),—seeing that in such 
there is no cry for redemption, no desire after deliverance, 
it is more than probable that lavish sin, above all, indul¬ 
gence in sensual lusts, superinducing, as it often would, a 
weakness of the nervous system, wherein is the especial 
band between body and soul, may have laid open these 
unhappy ones to the fearful incursions of the powers of 
darkness. They were greatly guilty, though not the 
guiltiest of all men. And this they felt, that by their own 
act they had given themselves over to this tyranny of the 
devil, a tyranny from which, as far as their horizon reached, 
they could see no hope of deliverance,—that to themselves 
they owed that this hellish might was no longer without 
them, which being resisted would flee from them; but a 


OF THE GADARENES. IJI 

power which now they could not resist, and which would 
not flee. 

Tlie phenomena which the demoniacs of Scripture, espe¬ 
cially those now before us, exhibit, entirely justify this view 
of the real presence of another will upon the will of the 
sufferer. They are not merely influences, which little by 
little have moulded and modified his will and brought it into 
subjection; but a power is there, which the man at the very 
moment he is succumbing to it, feels to be the contradiction 
of his truest being; but which yet has forced itself upon 
him, and possessed him, that he must needs speak and act 
as its organ; however presently his personal consciousness 
may re-assert itself for a moment.^ This, that they have 
not become indissolubly one, that the serpent and the man 
have not, as in Dante’s awful image, grown together, 
‘each melted into other,’^ but that they still are twain; 
this is, indeed, the one circumstance of hope which survives 
amid the general ruin of the moral and sphitual life. Yet 
this, for the time being, gives the appearance, though a 

^ In accesses of delirium tremens, the penalty of lavish indulgence in 
intoxicating drinks, we find something analogous to this double conscious¬ 
ness. The victim of this ‘in his most tranquil and collected moments 
is not to be trusted; for the transition from that state to the greatest 
violence is instantaneous : he is often recalled by a word to an apparent 
state of reason, but as quickly his false impressions return j there is some¬ 
times evidence, at the time, of a state of double consciousness, a condition 
of mind which is sometimes remembered by the patient when the 
paroxysm is over ’ (Bright and Addison, On the Practice of Medicine, 
vol. i. p. 262), Gfrdrer, a German rationalist, is struck with a like phe¬ 
nomenon in others (Das Meilujthum und die Wahrheit, Stuttgart, 1838, 
p. 302) : Auch scheue ich mich trotz alien Aufklarern nicht zu bemerken, 
dass neuerdings bier zu Lande gar seltsame Erscheinungen der Art beo- 
bachtet worden sind, und wenn ich recht unterrichtet bin, so hat die 
hbchste arztliche Behorde in Wiirtemberg, der solche Falle vorgelegt 
wurden, dahin entschieden, dass es allerdings Krankheiten geben konne, 
durch welche zwei Bewusstseyn in den Menschen entstehen, so zwar 
dass der Betroffene iiberzeugt ist, neben seinem Ich noch ein Anderea 
mit Gewalt eingedrungenes in sich zu haben. In a note he adds. Mein 
Gewiihrsmann ist, ausser mehreren Anderen, ein Mann, den ich genau 
kenne, von kaltem Verstande, unbefangen, wahrhaffjg, ein mathema- 
tischer Kopf. 

* Dante, Inferno, xxv. 


172 THE DEMONIACS IN THE COUNTRY 


deceptive one, of a far entirer wreck of kis inner life than 
manifests itself in wicked men, who have given themselves 
over wholly, without reserve and without reluctancy, to 
the working of iniquity. In these last, by the very com¬ 
pleteness of their apostasy from the good, there is con¬ 
sistency at any rate; there are no merest incoherencies, 
no violent contradictions at every instant emerging in 
their words and in their conduct; they are at one with 
themselves. But all these incoherencies and self-contra¬ 
dictions we trace in the conduct of the demoniac; he 
rushes to the feet of Jesus, as coming to Him for aid, and 
then presently he deprecates his interference. There is 
not in him one vast contradiction to the true end of his 
being, consistently worked out, but a thousand lesser con¬ 
tradictions, in the midst of which the true idea of his life, 
not wholly obscured, will sometimes by fitful glimpses, re¬ 
appear. There is on his part an occasional reluctancy 
against this usurpation by another of his spirit’s throne— 
a protest, which for the present, indeed, does but aggravate 
the confusion of his life—but which yet contains in it the 
pledge of a possible freedom, of a redemption whereof he 
may be a partaker still. 

One objection to this view of the matter may be urged, 
namely, that if possession be anything more than insanity 
in some of its different forms, how comes it to pass that 
there are no demoniacs now, that these have wholly 
disappeared from among us ? But the assumption that 
there are none now, itself demands to be proved. It is 
not hard to perceive why there should be few by comparison; 
why this form of spiritual evil should have lost greatly 
both in frequency and malignity, and from both these 
causes be far more difficult to recognize. For in the first 
place, if there was anything that marked the period of the 
coming of Christ, and that immediately succeeding, it was 
the WTock and confusion of men’s spiritual life which was 
then, the sense of utter disharmony, the hopelessness, the 


OF THE GADARENES. 


m 


despair wliicli must have beset every man tlia fc thought at 
all,—this, with the tendency to rush with a frantic eager¬ 
ness into sensual enjoyments as the refuge from these 
thoughts of despair. That whole period was ^the hour 
and power of darkness,’ of a darkness which then, as just 
before the dawn of a new day, was the thickest. The 
world was again a chaos, and the creative words, ^Let 
there be light,’ though just about to be spoken, were not 
uttered yet. It was exactly the crisis for such soul- 
maladies as these, in which the spiritual, psychical, and 
bodily should be thus strangely intermingled, and it is 
nothing wonderful that they should have abounded at that 
time; for the predominance of certain moral maladies 
at certain epochs of the world’s history, specially fitted for 
their generation, with their gradual decline and total 
disappearance in others less congenial to them, is a fact 
itself admitting no manner of question.* 

Moreover we cannot doubfc that the might of hell has 
been greatly broken by the coming of the Son of God in 
the fiesh; and with this a restraint set on the grosser 
manifestations of its povv^er; ^ I beheld Satan as lightning 
faU from heaven ’ (Luke x. i8 ; cf. Rev. xx. 2). His rage 
and violence are continually hemmed in and hindered by 
the preaching of the Word and ministration of the Sacra¬ 
ments. It were another thing even now in a heathen 
land, above all in one where Satan was not left in undis¬ 
turbed possession, but wherein the great crisis of the 
conflict between light and darkness was beginning through 

^ All this has been well traced by Ilecker, in three valuable treatises 
translated into English with this common title, On the Epidemics of the 
Middle Ages. In treating of the terrible Dancing Mania, he shows how 
there are centuries open to peculiar inflictions of these kinds; how they 
root themselves in a peculiar temperament which belongs to men’s 
minds in those ages ; and how when they disappear, or become rare and 
lose their intensity, their very existence is denied by the sceptical igno¬ 
rance of a later age (pp. 87-152). Compare Delitzsch, System of Bihlical 
Psychologyf Engl. Transl. pp. 358-360. The whole chapter is fufi of 
interest. 


174 . THE DEMONIACS IN THE COUNTMY 

fclie first proclaiming there of the Gospel of Christ. There 
we might expect to encounter, whether in the same in¬ 
tensity or not, manifestations analogous to these. Rhenius, 
a well-known Lutheran missionary in India, gives this as 
exactly his own experience,*—namely, that among the 
native Christians, even though many of them walk not as 
children of light, yet there is no such falling under satanic 
influence in soul and body, as he traced frequently in the 
heathen around him; and he shows by a remarkable 
example, and one in which he is himself the witness 
throughout, bow the assault in the name of Jesus on the 
kingdom of darkness, as it brings out all forms of devilish 
opposition into fiercest activity, so calls out the endeavour 
to counterwork the truth through men who have been 
made direct organs of the devilish will. 

It may well be a question moreover, if an Apostle, or 
one with apostolic discernment of spirits, were to enter 
into a madhouse now, he might not recognize some of the 
sufferers there as ‘ possessed.’ Certainly in many cases oi 
mania and epilepsy there is a condition very analogous to 
that of the demoniacs. The fact that the sufferer, and 
commonly those around him, may apprehend it differently, 
is not of the essence of the matter; they will but in this 
reflect the popular impression of the time. Thus, no 
doubt, the Jews unreasonably multiplied the number oi 
the possessed, including among cases of possession many 
lower forms of disharmony in the inner life. The same 
mistake may very probably have been committed in the 
early Church, and many there, who had not fallen under 
this immediate tyranny of the devil, may yet have traced 
up their sufferings directly to bim. Now, however, the 
popular feeling, which the unhappy man brings with him 
into his forlorn state, sets the opposite way, and in agree¬ 
ment with this is the language which he uses about 

^ In a letter of date March 27, 1818, printed in Von Meyers Blatter 
fur hohere Wahrheit, vol. vii. pp. 199-208. 


OF THE GADABENES, 


175 


liimself, and others use about him. But the case imme¬ 
diately before us is one in which no question can exist, 
since the great Physician of souls Himself declares it one 
of a veritable possession, and treats it as such; and to this 
we will address ourselves now. 

The connexion is very striking in which this miracle 
stands with that other which went immediately before. 
Our Lord has just shown Himself as the pacifier of the 
tumults and the discords in the outward world; He has 
spoken peace to the winds and to the waves, and hushed 
the war of elements with a word. But there is something 
wilder and more fearful than the winds and the waves in 
their fiercest moods—even the spirit of man, when it has 
broken loose from all restraints, and yielded itself to be his 
organ, who brings confusion and anarchy wherever his 
dominion reaches. And Christ will accomplish here a yet 
mightier work than that which He accomplished there; 
He will prove Himself here also the Prince of Peace, the 
restorer of the lost harmonies ; He will speak, and at his 
potent word this madder strife, this blinder rage .which is 
in the heart of man, will allay itself, and here also there 
shall be a great calm. 

In seeking to combine the accounts given us of this 
memorable healing, a difficulty meets us at the outset,^ 

' There is another difficulty, namely, that, according at least to the 
received reading, St. Matthew lays the scene of the miracle in the 
country of the Gergesenes, St. Mark and St. Luke in that of the 
Gadarenes. But the MSS. in all three Evangelists vary between 
ra(V/o>7vwr, rfparrr/vwv, and Tfpyt(rr)vCjv (see Tregelles, On the Printed 
Text of the Greek Testament, p, 192) ; so that it is impossible to say that 
there exists even a seeming contradiction here. Lachmann, for instance, 
finds none, who, certainly with no motive of excluding such, reads 
Ttpaam’iov throughout, which reading Origen found in most MSS. of his 
day,* Fritzsche, in like manner, everywhere Tn^aprjv^v, which Winer 
also prefers (Realworterhuch, s. v. Gadara). This reading Origen says 
(in Joh. tom. vi. 24), was not in many MSS. of his time; yet is almost 
certainly the right one ; Griesbach, Scholz, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford 
/laving all adopted it; for Gadara, the capital city of Peraea, lay s.E. of 
the southern point of Gennesareth, at a distance of not more than sixty 


l]6 THE DEMONIACS IN THE COUNTRY 

fcliis, namely, that St. Matthew speaks of two demoniacs, 
while St. Mark and St. Lnke only of one. Many recon¬ 
ciliations of their statements have been offered; as that 
one was a more notable person in the country than the 
other, which is Augustine’s; ^ or that one was so much 
fiercer as to cause the other by most persons hardly to be 
taken note of, which is that of Maldonatus. However we 
may account for it, one, it is evident, did faU into the 
background; and, therefore, following the later Evan¬ 
gelists, I shall speak in the main as they do, of the one 
demoniac who inet the Lord as He came out of the ship; 
—not as though the other was not present: but these 
accounts, in which there appears but one, being those 
which, as the fullest, I desire mainly to follow, it would 
cause much embarrassment to use any other language. 

The picture of the miserable man is fearful; and in draw¬ 
ing it each Evangelist has some touches peculiarly his own; 

stadia from Tiberias, its country being called Va^aplnq (see the Diet, of 
the Bible, s. v.). But Gerasa lay on the extreme eastern limit of Peraea 
(Josephus, B. J. iii. 3. 3; iv. 9. i); so as sometimes to be numbered 
among the cities of Arabia, and much too distant to give its name to a 
district on the borders of the lake. Origen, therefore, on topographical 
motives, suggests rtp-)t<yi]vu}v, a reading which apparently is a pure con¬ 
jecture of his own, and which, till he gave it an impulse, had no place in 
any MSS. He does not see in this any reference to the old Ttpyiaaioi, 
one of the seven nations of Canaan (Dent. vii. i), but to a city in that 
neighbourhood called Tkpyzfra, whose existence he affirms; but of which 
in some earlier editions of this book I stated there exists no trace 
whatever j see, however, as slightly modifying this assertion. Dr. 
Thomson, The Land and the Booh, part ii. ch. xxv., though his proofs are 
of the weakest. If there did lie any difference in the several Gospels at 
the first, it would probably be explained thus, that the limits of the 
territory, belonging to each city, were not very accurately determined, 
so that one Evangelist called it the country of one city, and one cf 
another. 

1 Augustine {De Cons. Evang. ii. 24) : Intelligas unum eorum fiiisse 
personae alicujus clarioris et famosioris, quern regio ilia maxime dolebat: 
so Theophylact, that one was tTnainioTtpog, and Grotius. See another 
solution in Lightfoot, Exercit. on St. Mark, in loc. In the same way 
St. Matthew mentions two blind men (xx. 30), where the other Evange¬ 
lists mention only one (Mark x. 46 ; Luke xviii. 3 5). It remained for a 
modern interpreter, Ammon {Bihlische Theologie), to suggest that the 
two were a madman and his keeper ' 


OF THE GADARENES, 


^11 


but St. Mark’s, as is bis wont, is the most graphic of .all, 
adding many strokes which wonderfully enhance the terri¬ 
bleness of the man’s condition, and thus magnify the glory 
of his cure. He had his dwelling among the tombs, that 
is, in places unclean because of the dead men’s bones 
which were there (Hum. xix. 11, i6 ; Matt, xxiii. 27 \ Luke 
xi. 44). To those who did not therefore shun them, these 
tombs of the Jews afforded ample shelter, being either 
natural caves, or recesses artificially hewn out of the rock, 
often so large as to be supported with columns, and with 
cells upon their sides for the reception of the dead. Being 
without the cities, and oftentimes in remote and solitary 
places, tliey would attract those who sought to avoid all 
fellowship of their kind.^ Many such tombs may still be 
found in the immediate neighbourhood of Gadara.^ This 
man was possessed of that extraordinary muscular strength 
y>rhich maniacs so often put forth (cf. Acts xix. 16), and thus 
all efforts to bind and restrain him (and such had been often 
repeated) had proved ineffectual (Mark v. 4). St. Matthew 
alone relates how he had made the way impassable for 

^ Ilavernicli:, on Daniel iv. 33, quotes -^tius, Ee Melancholid, iii. 8 j 
who says of the melancholy-mad, ol ttXhovq iv aKordvoig ronotg x«/|Ooa(n 
ciarpifBtiv, Kul iv fivrjfiaaif Kai iv ipijfioiQ. And Warhurton {The Crescent 
and the Cross, vol. ii. p. 352) remarkably illustrates this account: ‘On 
descending from these heights [those of Lebanon], I found myself in a 
cemetery, whose sculptured turbans showed me that the neighbouring 
village was Moslem. The silence of the night was now broken hy fierce 
yells and bowlings, which I discovered proceeded from a naked maniac., 
w^ho was fighting with some wild dogs for a bone. The moment he 
perceived me, he left his canine comrades, and bounding along with 
rapid strides, seized my horse’s bridle, and almost forced him backward 
over the cliff, by the grip he held of the powerful Mameluke bit.’ 

* See Burckhardt, and, for the whole scenery of this miracle, Stanley, 
Sinai and Palestine, p. 372. ‘The most interesting remains of Gadara,’ 
says the Dictionary of the Bible, s. v., ‘ are its tombs, which dot the cliff 
for a considerable distance round the city. They are excavated in the 
limestone rock, and consist of chambers of various dimensions, some more 
than twenty feet square, with recesses in the sides for bodies. The doors 
are slabs of stone, a few being ornamented with panels; some of them 
still remain in their places. The present inhabitants of Um Keis [the 
old Gadara] are all troglodytes, “ dwelling in tombs,” like the pocr 
maniacs of old.’ 


178 THE DEMONIACS IN THE COUNTEY 

travellers ; St. Luke alone tliat lie was witkont clothing,* 
which, however, is assumed in St. Mark’s statement, that 
after he was healed he was found ^ clothed^ and in his right 
mind/ sitting at Jesus’ feet. Yet with all this, he was not 
BO utterly lost, hut that from time to time there woke up 
in him a sense of his misery, and of the frightful bondage 
under which he had come; although this could express 
itself only in his cries, and in a blind rage against himself 
as the true author of his woe; out of which he wounded 
and cut himself with stones.® 

From such an one as this the Lord received his first 
greeting on those shores which now, probably for the first 
time, his feet were treading. This man with his com¬ 
panion starting from their dwelling-place in the tombs, 
rushed down to encounter, it may have been with hostile 
violence, the intruders who had dared to set foot on their 
domain. Or possibly they were at once drawn to Christ by 
the secret instinctive feeling that He was their helper, and 
repelled from Him by the sense of the awful gulf that 
divided them from Him, the Holy One of God. At any 
rate, if it was with purposes of violence, ere the man reached 
Him his mind was changed; ‘for He had commanded the 
unclean spirit to come out of the man ’ (Luke viii. 29), and 
the unclean spirit had recognized one that had a right to 
command; against whom force would avail nothing; and, 

' Pricliard (On Insanity, p. a6) quotes from an Italian physician’s 
description of raying madness or mania: ^ A striking and characteristic 
circumstance is the propensity to go quite naked. The patient tears his 
clothes to tatters; ’ and presently, in exact accordance yyith the descrip¬ 
tion yre have here: ^Notwithstanding his constant exertion of mind and 
body, the muscular strength of the patient seems daily to increase. He 
is able to break the strongest bonds, and even chains.’ 

2 Prichard (Ibid.,^. 113), describing a case of raving mania: ^ He 
habitually wounded his hands, wrists,' and arms, with needles and 

pins;.the blood sometimes flowed copiously, dropping from his 

elbows when his arms were bare.’ Altogether we have here a fearful 
commentary on the words of St. Peter, who describes such as this man as 
being KaTahvvaaTtvofxkvovc, virb tov Sia^oXov (Acts X. 38). An apocryphal 
allusion to this miracle adds one circumstance more,—that they gnawed 
their own flesh: (rapKotjayovvrag Tojv ib'nt)v jxtXojv (Thilo, Cod, Apocryph. 
Yol, i. p. 808). 



OF THE GADARENES. 


179 


like others on similar occasions, songht by a strong adju¬ 
ration to avert his coming doom. He ‘ cried with a loud 
voice, What have I to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of the 
most high God ? (cf. Lnke iv. 34,41 ; Acts -xvi. 17.) I adjure 
Thee hy God that Thou torment me not,^ * Herein the true 
devilish spirit speaks ont, w-hich counts it a torment not to 
be suffered to torment others, and an injury done to itself 
when it is no more permitted to be injurious to others. In 
St. Matthew they say, ^ Art Thou come hither to torment us 
before the time? ’ so that, by their own confession, a time 
is coming, an inevitable hour, when there shall be an entire 
victory of the kingdom of light over that of darkness, and 
when all which belong unto the latter shall be shut up in 
the abyss (Rev. xx. 10), and all power of harming withdrawn 
from them for ever. All Scripture agrees with this, that 
the judgment of the angels is yet to come (i Cor. vi. 3); 
they are ‘ reserved in everlasting chains under darkness 
unto the judgment of the great day ’ (Jude 6); and what 
the unclean spirits deprecate here, is the bringing in, by 
anticipation, of that final doom. 

The first bidding of Christ is not immediately obeyed ;— 
the evil spirits remonstrate, and do not at once abandon 
their prey. Ho doubt He could have compelled them to 
this, had He pleased; but the man might have perished in 
the process (cf. Mark ix. 24). Even that first bidding had 

^ Baiir (^Apollonius von Tyana und Christus, p. 145) notes the remark¬ 
able resemblance which the narrative in the Life of Apollonius (iv. 25) 
of the demon which sought vainly to avert its doom, and at length 
yielded to the threatening words of Apollonius, and abandoned the young 
man of Corcyra, has with the present. This resemblance extends to the 
very words. As the possessed exclaims here, Ti tnoi Kal <toi, Tr/o-o?~, 
rov Qtov roil vipiaroii j Skofiai aov, fir} jus ^uaaviayc^ SO there of the Lamia 
it is said, daKpvovn tipicfi TO (pauua, icai eSiTro jur) jiacrav'Aetv avrb firjck 
avayKct^nv byoXoyeXi', o,ri thf. Baur does not doubt that that narrative 
was fashioned in imitation of this. Another expulsion of a demon 
(iv. 20) has even more notable points of likeness; and he might have 
referred to a third (iii. 38), in which many features of the father’s 
intercession for his lunatic son (Matt. xvii. 15, 16), and of the Syrophce- 
nician mother for her daughter (Matt. xv. 22), appear curiously blended 
together. 


i8o THE DEMONIACS IN THE COUNTRY 


induced a terrible paroxysm. It was tben of Christ’s own 
will, of the Physician wise and tender as He was strong, 
to proceed step by step. And, first, He demands of him 
his name,—some say, to magnify the greatness of the de¬ 
liverance and the Deliverer, by showing, through the 
answer, the power and malignity of the foe that should be 
overcome. But, more probably, the question was directed 
to the man. It should calm him, by bringing him to re¬ 
collection, to the consciousness of his personality, of which 
a man’s name is the outward expression,—that he was a 
person, having once been apart from, nor even now inex¬ 
tricably bound up with, those spiritual wickednesses which 
had dominion over him. The question may thus have been 
intended to facilitate his cure.* But if so meant, either the 
evil spirit snatches at the answer and replies for himself, 
or the unhappy man, instead of recurring to his true name, 
that which should remind him of what he was before he 
feU under this thraldom, declares his sense of the utter 
ruin of his whole moral and spiritual being. In his reply, 

^ My name is Legion, for we are many,’ truth and error are 
fearfully blended. Hot on one side only, but on every side, 
the walls of his spirit have been broken down ; and he laid 
open to all the incursions of evil, torn asunder in infinite 
ways, now under one hostile and hated power, now under 
another. The destruction is complete ; they who rule over 
him are ^ lords many.’ Only by an image drawn from the 
reminiscences of his former life can he express his sense of 
his own condition. He had seen the serried ranks of a 
Eoman legion, that fearful instrument of conquest, that 
sign of terror and fear to the conquered nations, and before 
which the Jew more especially quailed. Even such, at once 
one and many, cruel and inexorable and strong, were the 

^ In cases of soninambnlism, wliicli must be reg'arded as a disorder, 
though in one of the mildest forms, of the spiritual life, the sleep-walker, 
when everything else fails, may often he awakened and recalled to a 
healthy state of consciousness through being addressed by his name 
(Schubert, Krankheiten mid Stdnmgen der menschl, Seele, p. 368). 


OF THE GADARENES. 


i8i 

poWei’S tliat were tyrannizing over him.^ When it is said 
of Mary Magdalene, that ont of her had gone seven devils 
(Luke viii. 2), something of the same truth is expressed,— 
that her spiritual life was laid waste, not on one side only, 
but on many (cf. Matt. xii. 45). 

And then again, with that interchange of persons which 
was continually going forward, that quick shifting, so to 
speak, of the polarity, so that at one moment the human 
consciousness became the positive, at another the negative 
pole, the unclean spirit, or rather the man, become now 
his organ, speaks out anew, entreating not to be sent into 
the deep, or as it would be better ‘ the abyss ’ * (Luke viii. 
31), or, clothing his petition in the form of a notion which 
belonged to the man whom he possessed, ‘ that He would 
not send them away out of the country^ (Mark v. 10). The 
request is in each case the same; for, according to Jewish 
notions, certain countries being assigned to evil as well as 
to good spirits, the limits of which they were unable to 
overpass, to be sent out of their own country, no other 
being open to them, implied being sent into the abyss, 
since that alone would remain for them. 

Hereupon follows a circumstance which has ever proved 
one of the chief stumbling-blocks offered by the Evan¬ 
gelical history. The devils, if they must leave their more 
welcome habitation, the heart of man, if indeed the 


' See Olshausen, Commentary^ in loc. 

* eIq Ttjv afSvaao ]',—our Version leaves room fora confusion with what 
follows, where the swine under their influence rush down ^ into the sea.’ 
Wiclif better, ‘Thei preieden hym that he schulde not comande hem 
that they schulden go in to hell.’ With a like liability to confusion 
ai 3 v(T(TOQ is translated ‘ the deep,’ Rom. x. 7, where also ‘ hell,’ meaning 
by that word Hades in its most comprehensive sense, as including the 
gathering-place of all the departed, and not the 0vXa/c//, or abode of evil 
spirits alone, would have been better. Besides these two places, the word 
only occurs in the Apocalypse, but there several times, as ix. i, 2, 11 j 
xi. 7 ; xvii. 8 ; xx. i, 3, where it plainly means only the last, the rdprapog 
(z Pet. ii. 4)=7Pfvva. The word is properly an adjective from fSvaijog, 
the Ionic form of fivSSg: so Euripides, raprapov d^vaaa x«<r/^ara (P^a:- 
V. 1632). 


i82 the demoniacs in the country 


stronger is come, spoiling the strong man’s goods, taMng 
his thralls ont of his power, jet entreat, in their inextin¬ 
guishable desire of harming, or out of those mysterious 
affinities which evermore reveal themselves between the 
demoniacal and the bestial,^ to be allowed to enter into the 
swine ;—of which a large herd,—St. Mark, with his usual 
punctuality notes that they were ‘ about two thousand ,— 
were feeding on the neighbouring cliffs. But to the evil 
all things turn to evil. God’s saints and servants appear 
not to be heard; and the very refusal of their requests is to 
them a blessing (2 Cor. xii. 8, 9). The wicked, Satan 
(Job i. ii) and his ministers and servants, are sometimes 
heard, and the very granting of their petitions issues in 
their worse confusion and loss.^ So is it now: these evil 
spirits had their prayer heard; but only to their ruin. 
They are allowed to enter into the swine; but the destruc¬ 
tion of the whole herd follows; and that which they most 
dreaded came upon them; no longer finding organs in or 
through which to work, they are driven perforce to that 
very prisonhouse which they most would have shunned. 

The first cavil which has been raised here is this—^What 
right had the Lord to infiict this loss on the owners of the 
swine ?—^being the same which has been raised on occasion 
of the cursing of the barren fig-tree (Matt. xxi. 19). It 
might be sufficient to answer to this, that Christ did not send 
the devils into the swine; He merely drove them out from 
the men; all beyond this was merely permissive.* But 
supposing that He had done so—a man is of more value 
than many swine; and if this granting of the evil spirits’ 

I Of wMcli last the swine (arnica Into sus) may te taken for the 
fittest exponents, as is witnessed in the ethical language of most nations; 
in the Latin, for example, where spurcus is in close connexion with 
porcus (Ddderlein, Lat. Synon. vol. ii. p. 55), and in the French cochon- 
tierie. 

^ See Augustine’s excellent words, in Ep. J'oTx.. tract, vi. 7, g. 

* Augustine: Expulsa et in porcos deemonia; and Aquinas: 

Quod autem porci in mare praecipitati sunt, non fuit operatio divim 
miraculi, sed operatio daemonum e permissione divina. 


OF THE GADAUENES. 


183 

request helped in any way the cure of this sufferer, caused 
them to relax their hold on him more easily, mitigated the 
paroxysm of their going forth (cf. Mark ix. 26), this would 
have been motive enough for allowing them to perish. It 
may have been necessary for the permanent healing of the 
man that he should have this outward evidence and testi¬ 
mony that the hellish powers which held him in bondage 
had quitted their hold. He may have needed to have his 
deliverance sealed and realized to him in the open de¬ 
struction of his enemies; not otherwise to be persuaded 
that Christ had indeed and for ever set him free; as Israel, 
coming out of Egypt, must see the Egyptians dead upon 
the sea-shore before they could indeed believe that the rod 
of their oppressors had been broken for ever (Exod. xiv. 

30-) 

But setting aside all apologies, on what ground, it may 
be asked, is this which the Lord here wrought, made more 
the subject of cavil than any other loss inflicted upon men 
by Him from whom all things come, and who therefore 
can give or take away according to the good pleasure of 
his wiU ? Men might object with as good a right against 
the murrain which causes cattle to die, the inundation that 
destroys the fruits of the field, or any other natural 
calamity with which God chastens his children, punishes, 
or seeks to make contrite the hearts of his enemies; for 
oftentimes his taking away is in a higher sense a giving; 
a withdrawing of the meaner thing, to make receptive of 
the better. Thus might it well have been intended here, 
however the sin of these Gadarenes hindered the gracious 
design. If the swine belonged to Jewish owners, and we 
know from Josephus that there were numbers of helleni- 
zing Jews just in these parts, there may have been in this 
loss a punishment meant for them who from motives of 
gain showed themselves despisers of Moses’ law.' It must 
be owned, however, that the population of the Decapolis 
^ See Eisenmenger, Entdecldes Judmthum, vol. i. p. 704. 


i84 THE DEMONIACS IN THE COUNTET 


was predominantly Gentile; Joseplius calls Gadara itself a 
Greek citj.^ 

But the narrative is charged with contradiction and ab¬ 
surdity. The unclean spirits ask permission to enter into 
the swine, yet no sooner have they thus done than they 
defeat their own purpose, destroying that animal life, from 
which if they be altogether driven, they have already con¬ 
fessed they will be obliged to betake them to the more 
detested place of their punishment. It is nowhere, how¬ 
ever, said that they drove the swine down the steep place 
into the sea. It is just as easy, and much more natural, 
to suppose that against their will the swine, when they 
found themselves seized by this new and strange power, 
rushed themselves in wild and panic fear to their destruc¬ 
tion,—the foremost plunging .headlong down the cliffs, and 
the rest blindly following. But in either case, whether 
they thus destroyed themselves, or were impelled by the 
foul spirits, there reveals itself here the very essence and 
truest character of evil, which evermore outwits and de¬ 
feats itself, being as inevitably scourged in the granting 
of its requests as in their refusal; which, stupid, blind, 
self-contradicting, and suicidal, can only destroy, and wiU 
involve itself in the common ruin rather than not destroy. 
And what, if in the fierce hatred of these foul spirits of 
darkness against the Prince of light and life, they may 
have been willing to bring any harm on themselves, if only 
they might so bring on Him the ill-will of men, and thus 
traverse and hinder his blessed work? And this, no 
doubt, they did effectually here; for it was fear of further 
losses, and alienation from Christ on account of those by 
his presence already entailed upon them, which moved the 
people of the country to urge Him that He would leave 
their coasts. 

But the point of most real difiiculty is the entering of 
tlie devils into the swine,—the working, that is, of tho 
* A 7 itt xvii. 11. 4. 


OF THE GADARENES. 


185 


spiritual life on the bestial, which seems altc gether irre- 
ceptive of it, and to possess no organs through which it 
could operate. I put aside of course here, as both in 
themselves merely ridiculous, and irreconcilable with the 
documents as they lie before us, the solutions of Paulus 
and his compeers, that the demoniac, in the parting 
paroxysm of his madness, hunted the creatures over the 
precipices into the lake, or that, while the swineherds were 
drawn by curiosity to watch the encounter between Christ 
aud the demoniac, or had gone to warn Him of the danger 
of meeting the madman, the untended herd fell a fighting, 
and so tumbled headlong over the cliffs. Whatever diffi¬ 
culties this miracle may present, it certainly is not by 
shifts such as these to be evaded; and their perplexity at 
any rate claims to be respectfully treated, who find it hard 
to reconcile this fact with what else they have been taught 
to hold fast as most precious concerning the specific 
difference between man with the whole order of spiritual 
existences on the one side, and the animal creation on the 
other. I will only suggest that perhaps we make to 
ourselves a difficulty here, too easily assuming that the 
lower animal world is wholly shut up in itself, and incapable 
of receiving impressions from that which is above it. The 
assumption is one unwarranted by deeper investigations, 
which lead rather to an opposite conclusion,—not to a 
breaking down of the boundaries between the two worlds, 
but to the showing in what wonderful ways the lower is 
receptive of impressions from the higher, both for good 
and for evil.^ Nor does this working of the spiritual on 

^ Kieser, wlio certainly would not go out of his way to bring his theory 
into harmony with Scripture facts, distinctly rec6gnizes (TellunsmuSf 
vol. ii. p. 72), with reference to this present miracle, the possibility of the 
passing over of demoniac conditions upon others, and even upon animals 
(die Mdglichkeit eines Uebergangs damoni'scher Zustande auf Andere, 
und selbst auf Thiere). How remarkable in this respect are well- 
authenticated cases of clairvoya 7 ice, in which the horse is evidently by its 
terror, extreme agitation, and utter refusal to advance, a partaker of the 
vision of its rider (see Passavant, JJnters. uber d. Hellseherij p. 316 ; 


i86 THE DEMONIACS IN THE COUNTRY 


the physical life stand isolated in this single passage of 
Scripture, hut we are taught the same lesson throughout 
(Gen. hi. 17 ; Eom. viii. 18). 

^ And they that Icept them fled, omd went their ways into 
the city, and told every thing, and what was hefallen to the 
possessed of the devils! All three Evangelists record the 
entreaty of the Gadarenes which followed (compare, by way 
of contrast, that of the Samaritans, John iv. 40): ‘And, 
hehold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus ; and when they 
saw Him, they besought Him that He would depart out of their 
coasts! Assuredly this entreaty had not, as Jerome and 
others suggest, its root in their humility, was in no respect 
a parallel to St. Peter’s, ‘Depart from me, for I am a 
sinful man’ (Luke v. 8); being provoked rather by the 
injury which already from his brief presence among them 
had ensued to their worldly possessions, as perhaps by the 
fear of greater losses which might follow. This was their 
trial. It should now be seen whether the kingdom of 
heaven was first in their esteem; whether they would hold 
all else as cheap by comparison; so that in this aspect the 
destruction of the swine had in regard of them an ethical 
purpose and aim. But under this trial they failed. It 
was nothing to them that a man, probably a fellow-citizen, 
was delivered from that terrible bondage, that they saw 
him ‘ sitting at the feet of Jesus,^ that is being taught of 
Him (Luke x. 39 ; Acts xxii. 3), ‘ clothed, and in his right 
mind!^ The breach in their worldly estate alone occupied 

Scheitlin, Thierseelenkunde, vol. ii. p. 486). And indeed in our common 
life the horse, and the do^ no less, are eminently receptive of the spiritual 
conditions of their appointed lord and master, Man. With what electric 
swiftness does the courage or fear of the rider pass into the horse; and 
so too the gladness or depression of its master is almost instantaneously 
reflected and reproduced in his faithful dog. It is true that we might 
expect, as we should find, far less of this in the grosser nature of the 
swine than in those creatures of nohler races. Met the very fierceness 
and grossness of these animals may have been exactly that which best 
fitted them for receiving such impulses from the lower world as those 
under which they perished. 

^ Augustine {Qucsst. Evang. ii. c[u. 13): Significat multitudinem 


OF THE GADARENES. 


187 

iheir thouglits. Tor spiritual blessings brought near to 
them they cared nothing at all; and ‘ they were afraid* 
being ignorant what next might follow. They felt the 
presence of God’s Holy One intolerable to them, so long as 
they remained in their sins; and that to them, so remaining, 
it could only bring mischiefs, of which they had made the 
first experience already. And having no desire to be 
delivered from their sins, they entreated Him to go; they, 
like others before them, ‘ said to God, Depart from 'us; 
and what can the Almighty do for them ? ’ (Job xxii. 17) ; 
^for* as St. Luke tells us, ‘ they were taJcen with great fear* 
And their prayer also was heard (Ps. Ixxviii. 29-31); for 
God sometimes hears his enemies in anger (Hum. xxii. 20), 
even as He refuses to hear his friends in love (2 Cor. xii. 
8, 9). He did depart; He took them at their word, and 
let them alone * (cf. Exod. x. 28, 29), as they desired. 

But the healed man would fain have accompanied his 
Healer: and ^ when He was come into the ship, prayed Him 
that he might he with Him* Was it that he feared, as 
Theophylact supposes, lest in the absence of his Deliverer 
the spirits of the pit should resume their dominion over 

vetusta sua vita delectatam, honorare quidem, sed nolle pati, Christianam 
legem, dum dicunt quod earn implore non possint, admirantes tamen 
fidelem populum a pristina perdita conversatione sanatum. The name 
Gergeseni has been often since given to those who will not endure sound 
doctrine (Erasmus, Adagia, p. 313). 

* Augustine {Enarr. in Ps. cxxxvi. 3) has a noble passage on what the 
world calls prosperity; which when Christ interrupts, then the world 
counts that He has brought nothing good, and would fain have Him 
depart from it, if it might: Vides enim si theatra et amphitheatra et circi 
starent incolumes, si nihil caderet de Babylonia, si ubertas esset circum- 
fluentium voluptatum hominibus cantaturis et saltaturis ad turpia cantica, 
si libido scortantium et meretricantium haberet quietem et securitatem, 
si non timeret famem in domo sua qui clamat ut pantomimi vestiantur 
si haec omnia sine labe, sine perturbatione aliqua fluerent, et esset Securi¬ 
tas magna nugarum, felicia essent tempora, et magnam felicitatem rebus 
humaiiis Christus adtulisset. Quia vero caeduntur iniquitates, ut exstir- 
pata cupiditate plantetur caritas Jerusalem, quia miscentur amaritudines 
vitfiB temporali, ut seterna desideretur, quia erudiuntur in flagellis homines, 
paternam accipientes disciplinam, ne judiciariam inveniant sententiam; 
nihil boni adtulit Christus, et labores adtulit Christus. 

9 


l88 THE DEMONIACS IN TEE COUNTllY 

him, and nowhere felt safe but in immediate nearness to 
Him?—or did he only desire, out of the depth of his 
gratitude, henceforth to be a follower of Him to whom he 
owed this mighty deliverance ? Whatever was his motive, 
the Lord had other purposes with him. He was Himself 
quitting those who had shown themselves so unworthy of 
his presence; but He would not leave Himself without a 
witness among them. This man so wonderfully delivered 
from the worst bondage of the Evil One, should be to them 
a standing n?.onument of his grace and power, an evidence 
that He would have healed them, and was willing to heal 
them still, of all the diseases of their souls : ^ Jesus suffered 
him not, hut saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell 
them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath 
had compassion on theel ^ And the man did so, and not 
without effect; ‘ He departed, and began to publish in 
Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him ; and all 
men did marvel! * 

Yet this command that he should go and declare the 
great things done for him, may have found its further 
motive in the peculiar moral condition of the man. Only 
by a reference to this moral condition are we able to 
reconcile the apparently contradictory injunctions which 
the Lord laid on those whom He had healed:—some 
being forbidden to say anything of God’s goodness to them 
(Matt. viii. 4; Luke viii. 56),—this one commanded to 

• Erasmus rightly connects oaa not alone with TreTroirjKer, hut also with 
ijXkrjaev —of course, in the second case, adverbially: Et quantopere misertus 
sit tui. It is true that we should rather expect in such a case to have 
the oaa repeated3 but there are abundant examples to justify the omis¬ 
sion. 

2 Aug’ustino (Qucsst. Emng. ii. 13): Ut sic quisque intelligat post 
remissionem peccatorum redeundum sibi esse in conscientiam bonam, et 
serviendum Evangelio propter aliorum etiam salutem, ut deinde cum 
Christo requiescat; ne cum praepropere jam vult esse cum Christo, negligat 
ministerium praedicationis, fraternae redemptioni accommodatum. He 
mates in the same place this whole account an historico-prophetic 
delineation of the exorcizing, so to speak, of the heathen world of its 
foul superstitions and devilish idolatries. 


OF THE GABARENES, ' 189 

publish, everywhere the mercy which he had received. 
"We may very well suppose that where there was danger 
of all deeper impressions being scattered and lost through 
a garrulous repetition of the outward circumstances of the 
healing, silence was enjoined, that so there might be an 
inward brooding over the gracious and wondrous dealings 
of the Lord. But where, on the contrary, there was a 
temperament over-inclined to melancholy, sunken and 
shut up in itself, a man needing to be drawn out from 
self, and into healthy communion with his feUow-men,— 
as was evidently the case with such a solitary melancholic 
person as is here before us,—there the command was, that 
the man should go and tell to others the great things 
which God had done for him, and by the very act of this 
telling maintain the healthy condition of his own soul. 


6 . THE RAISING OF JAIRES' DAUGHTER, 


Matt. ix. i8,19, 23-26; Mark v. 22, 24^ 35-43; Luke Tiii. 41,42,49~5^» 
ms miracle is by St. Mark and St. Luke made im- 



J- mediately to follow our Lord’s return from that 
eastern side of the lake, which He had quitted when the 
inhabitants, guiltily at strife with their own good, had 
besought Him to depart out of their coasts (Matt. viii. 34). 
By St. Matthew other events, the curing of the paralytic, 
his own calling, and some discourses with the Pharisees, 
are inserted between. Yet of these only the latter (ix. 
10-17) the best harmonists find really to have here their 
proper place. ‘ While He sjpake these things unto them, 
behold, there came a certain ruler, and worshipped Him.^ 
The two later Evangelists record his name, ‘ Jairus,^ and 
more accurately define his office; he was ^ one of the rulers 
of the synagogue,^ ’ all which St. Matthew, who has his eye 
only on the main fact, and to whom all its accessories 
seem indifferent, passes over. The synagogue, we can 
hardly doubt, was that of Capernaum, where now Jesus 
was (Matt. ix. i); the man therefore most probably made 
afterwards a part of that deputation which came to the 
Lord pleading for the heathen centurion (Luke vii. 3); 

^ In Matthew simply apxu)v, which, is explained in Mark tig riav 
apxi'<^vvay(oyb)Vf in Luke dpxwv Ttjg avvayojyrjg. Many synagogues had 
but one of these (Luke xiii. 14), the name itself indicating as much; yet 
it is plain from this and other passages, as Acts xiii. 15, that a synagogue 
often had many of these ^ rulers' Probably those described as tovq bvrag 
Tujv ’lovdaiujv irpunovg, whom St. Paul summoned at Pome (Acts xxviii. 
17), were such ^chiefs of the synagogue’ (see Vitringa, De Synagogd, 
pp. 584, sqq.). 


THE RAISING OF JAIRUS' DAUGHTER. I91 

tlie elders of the Jews ’ there being identical with the 
rulers of the synagogue ’ here. 

But he who may have pleaded then for another, presents 
himself now pleading for his own; for he comes saying, 

‘ 3 Iy daughter is even now dead; hut come and lay thy hand 
upon her, and she shall Uve.^ Thus St. Matthew ; but the 
other Evangelists with an important variation : ‘ My little 
daughter lieth at the point of death ’ ^ (Mark v. 23): ^He had 
one only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she lay a 
dying ’ (Luke viii. 42). This, which the after history 
shows to have been more exactly the fact, is not hard to 
reconcile with the statement in St. Matthew. When the 
father left his child, she was at the last gasp; he knew not 
whether to regard her now as alive or dead; he only knew 
that life was ebbing so fast when he quitted her side, that 
she could scarcely be living still; ^ and yet, having no 
certain notices of her death, he was perplexed whether to 
speak of her as departed or not, and thus at one moment 
would express himself in one language, at the next in 
another. Strange that a circumstance like this, so drawn 
from the life, so testifying to the reality of the things 
recorded, should be urged by some as a contradiction 
between one Gospel and another. 

That Lord upon whose ear the tidings of woe might 
never fall in vain, at once ^ arose and followed him, and so 
did his disciples.'^ The crowd which had been listening to 

* ’EfTx«rojc £xf»j'=:in extremis esse; one of the frequent Latinisms of 

St. Mark ; which do something to corroborate the old tradition that this 
Gospel was written originally at home, and for Roman readers. So imvbv 
7rot»7fT«i=satisfncere (xv. 15), aTreKovXdrojp (vi. 27), (ppaytXXocj (xv. 15), 
Xsytibv (v. 9, 15), vpaiTiopiov (xv. 16), KtjvcTog (xii. 14), KtVTvpiu)v (xv. 39), 
KobpdvrpQ (xii. 42), bpvdpLov ("vi. 37 ; xh. 5), (vu. 4, 8), and others. 

The use of diminutives, such as the Bvydrpiov here, is also characteristic 
of this Evangelist ; thus Kopdaiov (v. 41), Kwdpia (vii. 27), ix^vSia (hi. 
7), (brdpwv (xiv. 47). 

* Bongel: Ita dixit ex conjectura. Augustine {De Cons. Evang. ii. 28) : 
Ita enim de«peraverat, ut potius earn vellet reviviscere, non credens vivam 
posse inveniri, quam morientem reliquerat. But Theophylact, not, I 
think, rightly : 'Hv av^dvwv rrjv ffvpfopdi', ojg dg iXsov kXKVfrai rbv XpiarSv* 


THE EAIBim OF 


192 

his teaching, followed also, curious and eager to see what 
the Lord would do or would fail to do. The miracle of the 
healing of the woman with the issue of blood found place 
upon the way, but will naturally be better treated apart; 
being, as it is, entirely separable from this history, though 
not altogether without its bearing upon it; for the delay, 
the words which passed between the Lord and his disciples, 
and then between Him and the woman, must all have been 
a- sore trial to the agonized father, now when every 
moment was precious, when death was shaking the last 
few sands in the hour-glass of his daughter’s life,—a trial 
in its kind similar to that with which the sisters of 
Lazarus were tried, when they beheld their beloved brother 
drawing ever nigher to the grave, and the Lord tarried 
notwithstanding. But sore as the trial must have been, 
we detect no signs of impatience on his part, and this no 
doubt was laid to his account. While the Lord was yet 
speaking to the woman, ‘ there came from the ruler of the 
synagogue's house certain which said. Thy daughter is dead : 
why trouhlesF thou the Master any further?^ St. Luke 
mentions but one, probably the especial bearer of the 
message, whom others went along with, as it is common 
for men in their thirst for excitement to have a kind of 
pleasure in being the bearers even of evil tidings. What 
hope of ejBPectual help from Christ they may before have 
entertained, had now perished. They who, perhaps, had 
faith enough to believe that He could fan the last expiring 
spark of life into a flame, yet had not the stronger faith 
to anticipate the harder thing, that He could rekindle 
that spark of life, after it had been quenched altogether. 
Perhaps the father’s hope would have perished too, and no 

* XkwXXw, properly to flay, as iTKvXa are originally the spoils, dress, or 
armour, stripped from the bodies of the slain; afterwards more generally, 
fatigare, vexare, and often with a'special reference to fatiguing through 
the length of a journey (we should read inKvXftkvoi, not iK\t\v}ikvot, 
Matt. xix. 36); as is the meaning hei^: ‘Why dost thou weary the 
Master with this tedious way ? ’ (see Suicer, Thes. s. v.). 


JAinUS'' DAUGHTER, 


193 


room have been left for this miracle, faith, the necessary 
condition, being wanting; if a gracious Lord had not seen 
the danger, and prevented his rising unbelief. ‘ As soon 
as Jesus heard the word that was spoJcen, He saith to the 
ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe,^ There 
is something very gracious in that ‘as soon,’ The Lord 
spake upon the instant, leaving no room for a thought of 
unbelief to insinuate itself into the father’s mind, much 
less to utter itself from his lips, hut preoccupying him at 
once with words of encouragement and hope.‘ 

And now He takes with Him three of his Apostles, Peter 
and James and John, the same three who were allowed, on 
more than one later occasion, to be witnesses of things 
withdrawn from the others. We read here for the first 
time of such an election within the election and the fact 
of such now finding place would mark, especially when we 
remember the solemn significance of the other seasons of 
a like selection (Matt. xvii. i, 2; xxvi. 37), that this was a 
new era in the life of the Lord. The work on which He 
was entering now was so strange and so mysterious that 
those three only, the flower and the crown of the apostolic 
band, were its fitting witnesses. The parents were present 
for reasons altogether different. With those, and these, 
and none other, ‘ He cometh to the house of the ruler of the 
synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and them that wept and 
wailed greatly ’ (Mark); ‘ the minstrels and the people mahing 
a noise,’ as the earlier Evangelist has it. There, as every¬ 
where else. He appears calming and pacifying; ‘ He saith 
unto them. Why mahe ye this ado, and weep ? the damsel 
is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed Him to scorn,’ 

Some, and those not unbelievers, nor yet timid half be¬ 
lievers, who have learned to regard miracles as so much 

* Titus Bostrensis (in Cramer, Cat. in Luc.) : "iva yap fii) uiry kuI 

uvTog, ’Eniax^c, ov xpdav aov Kvpie, rjSn ykyovt to Trtpag, a7rk9avf.v, ijv 
vpoaf-SoKCjpiV vyiaivuv' dniaTog yap ijv, ‘lovda’iicbv tx^v (ppovtjpa, <p9dvH b 
Kifpiog Kui 0o/3oi), Travaov rrjQ cnrioTiag rd pt]paTa, 

* *EK\tKr{bv eKXtKTOTfoot, as Clement of Alexandria calls them. 


194- 


THE RAISING OF 


perilons ware, from which, it is always an advantage when 
the Gospels can be a little lightened,—Olshansen, for in* 
stance,' who elsewhere has manifested no wish to explain 
away the wonderful works of our Lord,—have yet con¬ 
sidered his words, common to all reports of this miracle, 
‘ The maid is not dead, hut sleepeth/ to he so explicit, that 
in obedience to them they have no choice but to refuse to 
number this among the actual raisings from the dead. 
They account it only a raising from a death-like swoon; 
though possibly a swoon from which the maiden would 
never have been recalled but for that life-giving touch and 
voice. Had this, however, been the case, Christ’s word of 
encouragement to the father, when the tidings came that 
the spirit of his child was actually fled, would have 
certainly been diff*erent from that which actually it was. 
He might have bidden the father to dismiss his fear, foi 
He, who knew all, knew that there was yet life in the child. 
But that ‘ Be not afraid, only believe,^ points another way; 
it is an evident summoning him to a trust in the almighti- 
ness of Him, to whose help he had appealed. Then too 
Christ uses exactly the same language concerning Lazarus, 
^ Our friend Lazarus sleepeth ’ (John xi. 11), which He uses 
about this maiden ; and we know that He spoke there not 
of a death-like swoon, but of death. When to this obvious 
objection Olshansen replies, that Christ explains there 
distinctly that He meant the sleep of death, adding 
presently, ‘ Lazarus is dead,’ it is enough to answer that 
He only does so after his disciples have misapprehended his 
words : He would have left those words as He had spoken 
them, but for their error in supposing that He had spoken 
of natural sleep; it was only then that He exchanged 

^ Origen {Con, Cels. ii. 48) has, I think, the same yiew of this miracle. 
He is observing on the absence of all 'prodigality in the miracles, and notes 
that we have but three raisings from the dead in all; mentioning this 
first of Jairus’ daughter, he adds, Trepi i)govK old’ ottw^ dntv, Ovk cnr'sOavev, 
dWd KaOevdti’ Asywv r-i jrepi avrrjQ B ov Trotri Tolg dm Oarovai Trpoarjv, but h« 
5 oes not express himself very plainly. 


JAIRUS^ DAUGHTER. 


195 


* Oar friend Lazarus sleepetli ’ for ^ Lazarus is dead.’ But 
as Lazarus did but sleep, because Jesus was about to 
‘ awake him out of sleep,’ so was this maiden only sleeping, 
because her awakening in like manner was so near.^ 
Beside this, to speak of death as a sleep, is an image 
common to all languages and nations. Thereby the 
reality of the death is not denied, but only the fact im¬ 
plicitly assumed, that death will be followed by a resur¬ 
rection, as sleep is by an awakening. [Nor is it hard to 
perceive why the Lord should have used this language 
here. First, for the father’s sake. The words are for the 
establishing of his trembling faith, which at the spectacle 
of all these signs of mourning, of these evidences that aU 
was finished, might easily have given way altogether; 
they are a saying over again, ‘ Be not afraid, only believe.* 
He, the Lord of life, takes away that word of fear, ^ She is 
dead,* and substitutes that milder word which contains the 
pledge of an awakening, ^ She sleepeth.* At the same timo 
in that holy humility which makes Him ever withdraw his 
miracles as much as possible from observation. He will by 
this word of a double signification cast a veil for the mul¬ 
titude over the work, which He is about to accomplish. 

And now, having thus spoken. He expelled from the 
house the crowd of turbulent mourners; and this for two 
reasons. Their presence, in the first place, was inap¬ 
propriate and superfluous there; they were mourners for 
the dead, and she was not dead; or, at all events, death in 
her was so soon to give place to returning life, that it did 
not deserve the name; it was but as a sleep and an 
awakening. Here was reason enough. But more than 
this, the boisterous and tumultuous grief of some, with the 
hired lamentations of others (Jer. ix. 17, 18; Am. v. 16),^ 

^ Fritzsclie: Puellam ne pro mortua habetote, sed dormireexiptimatote, 
quippe in vitam mox redituram. Bengel: Puelia, ob resuscitationem 
mox faturam, et celeriter et certo et facile, non erat annumeranda mortuid 
olim resurrecturia, sed dormientibus. 

2 The presence of the hired mourners at a funeral in general women 


196 


THE BAISING OF 


gave no promise of the tone and temper of spirit, -which 
became the witnesses of so holy and awful a mystery, a 
mystery from which even Apostles themselves were ex¬ 
cluded—to say nothing of the profane and scornful spirit 
with which they had received the Lord’s assurance, that 
the child should presently revive. Such scomers shall 
not witness the holy act: the pearls should not be cast 
before them. There is a similar putting of all forth on 
the part of Peter when about by the prayer of faith to 
raise Tabitha, although that was not in the same way 
provoked (Acts ix. 40; cf. 2 Kin. iv. 33). 

The house was now solitary and still. Two souls, 
believing and hoping, stand like funeral tapers beside the 
couch of the dead maiden—the father and the mother. 
The Church is represented in the three chief of its 
Apostles. And now the solemn awakening finds place, 
and this without an effort on his part, who is absolute 
Loid of quick and dead. ‘ He tooh the damsel^ —she was 
no more than a child, being ‘ of the age of twelve years ’ 
(Mark v. 42)— ‘hy the hand (cf. Acts ix. 41), and called, 
saying, Maid, arise.’ St. Mark preserves for us, having 
probably received them from the lips of Peter, the very 
words which the Lord spake in the very language wherein 
He uttered them, ‘ Talitha Gumi,’ as he does the ‘ Ejphpha- 
tha’ on another occasion (vii. 34^). And at that word, 

prajficse, cornicines, tubicines), was a Greek and Koman, as 
well as a Jewish, custom (see Becker, Charicles, toI. ii. p. 180). 

' The mention of these words may he taken as evidence that in the 
intercourse of ordinary life our Lord employed the popular Aramaic. 
This does not, of course, decide anything concerning the language which 
He used, addressing mixed assemblages of Jews and heathen, learned 
and unlearned. On the extent to which Greek had at this time found 
its way into Palestine, and was familiar to all classes there, there is a 
masterly discussion in Hug’s Introduction to the New Testament, which 
has put the matter quite in a new light, and added greatly to the proba¬ 
bilities that He often in his discourses employed that language. His 
conversation with Pilate could scarcely have been carried on in any 
otiier. 


JAinu S' DAUGHTER, 


197 


and at tlie toucb. of that hand, ^ her spirit came agaluy^ and 
she arose straightway (Luke yili. 55), and, walked^ (Mark v. 
42). Hereupon, at once to strengthen that life which was 
come hack to her, and to prove that she was indeed no 
ghost, but had returned to the realities of a mortal ex¬ 
istence (cf. Luke xxiv. 41; John xxi. 5 ; Acts x. 41), ‘ He 
commanded to give her meat ; ’ a precaution the more 
necessary, as the parents in that ecstatic moment might 
easily have forgotten it. Bat before recording this, St. 
Mark does not fail to record, as is his manner, the profound 
impression which this miracle made on the beholders; 
^ they were astonished with a great astonishment ’ (cf. i. 27; ii. 
12; iv. 41; vi. 51; vii. 37). St. Luke records the same, 
but with a slighter emphasis, and relating only the 
astonishment of the parents. 

These miracles of raising from the dead, whereof this is 
the first, have always been regarded as the mightiest out- 
comings of the power of Christ; and with justice. They 
are those, also, at which unbelief is readiest to stumble, 
standing as they do in more direct contrast than any 
other, to all that our experience has known. The line 
between health and sickness is not definitely fixed; the 
two conditions melt one into the other, and the transition 
from this to that is frequent. In like manner storms 
alternate with calms; the fiercest tumult of the elements 
allays itself at last; and Christ’s word which stilled the 
tempest, did but anticipate and effect in a moment, what 
the very conditions of nature must have effected in the 
end. Even the transmutation from water to wine, and the 
multiplication of the bread, are not without their analogies 
in nature, however remote; and thus too is it with most 
of the other miracles. But between bein g, and the negation 
of being, the opposition is not relative, but absolute; 
between death and life a gulf lies, which no fact furnished 

' The words of St. Luke, Kal fTrearpe^pe to TTvsv^ci avT^g, fire exactly the 
same as those i Kin. xvii. 22, LXX, 


THE RAISING OF 


198 

by our experience can help us even in imagination to 
bridge over. It is nothing wonderful, therefore, that 
miracles of this class are signs more spoken against than 
any other among all the mighty works of the Lord. 

The present will be a fitting moment to say something 
on the relations of difficulty in which the three miracles of 
this transcendant character stand to one another; for they 
are not exactly the same miracle repeated three times over, 
but may be contemplated as in an ever ascending scale of 
difficulty, each a more marvellous outcoming of the power 
of Christ than the preceding. Tor as the body of one 
freshly dead, from which life has but just departed, is very 
different from a mummy or a skeleton, or from the dry 
bones which the prophet saw in the valley of death (Ezek. 
xxxvii.), so is it, though not in the same degree, different 
from a corpse, whence for some days the breath of life has 
fled. There is, so to speak, a fresh-trodden way between 
the body, and the soul which just has forsaken it; this 
last lingering for a season near the tabernacle where it has 
dwelt so long, as knowing that the links that united them 
have not even now been divided for ever. Even science 
itself has arrived at the conjecture, that the last echoes of 
life ring in the body much longer than is commonly 
supposed ; that for a while it is full of the reminiscences 
of life. Out of this we may explain how it so frequently 
comes to pass, that all which marked the death-struggle 
passes presently away, and the true image of the departed, 
the image it may be of years long before, reappears in 
perfect calmness and in almost ideal beauty. All this 
being so, we shall at once recognize in the quickening of 
him that had been four days dead (John xi. 17), a yet 
mightier wonder than in the raising of the young man 
who was home out to his burial (Luke vii. 12) ; whose 
burial, according to Jewish custom, will have followed 
death by an interval, at most, of a single day ; and again 
in that miracle a mightier outcoming of Christ’s power 


JAIRUS^ DAUGHTER, 


199 


than in the present, wherein life’s flame, like some newly- 
extinguished taper, was still more easily re-kindled, when 
thus brought in contact with Him who is the fountain- 
flame of all life. Immeasurably more stupendous than all 
these, will be the wonder of that hour, when all the dead 
of old, who will have lain, some of them for many thousand 
years, in the dust of death, shall be summoned from and 
shall leave their graves at the same quickening voice 
(John V. 28, 29), 


7. THE HEALING OF THE WOMAN WITH AN ISSUE 
OF BLOOD. 

Matt. ix. 20-22; Mark v. 25-34.; LuKE vni. 43-48. 

I N all three accounts Tvhich we have of this miracle, it is 
mixed up with that other of the raising of Jairus’ 
daughter, and cuts that narrative in two. Such overflowing 
grace is in Him, the Prince of life, that as He is hastening 
to accomplish one work of power. He accomplishes another, 
as by the way. ‘ His obiter,^ in Puller’s words, ‘ is more to 
the purpose than our his nrdpsp'yov, one might add, 

than our spyov. To the second and third Evangelists we 
owe the most distinctive features of this miracle. St. 
Matthew relates it so briefly, and passes over circumstances 
so material, that, had we not the parallel records, we 
should miss much of the instruction which it contains. 
But doubtless it was intended, if not by their human 
penmen, yet by their Divine author, that the several 
Gospels should thus mutually complete one another. 

The Lord had consented to follow Jairus to his house, 
‘ and much peo;ple thronged Him and pressed Him/ curious, 
no doubt, to witness what the issue would be, and whether 
He could indeed raise the dying or dead child; for to no 
less a work, thus going. He seemed in a manner pledged. 
But if thus with most, it was not so with all. Mingled 
with and confounded in that crowd eager to behold some 
new thing, was ^ a certain woman/ which had an issue of 

^ A sennon, wrongly attributed to St. Ambrose, makes this woman to 
have been Martha, the sister of Lazarus; the Gospel of Nicodemiis (Thilo, 
Col. Apocryph. vol. i. p. 562b Veronica. There is a strange story full 


THE WOMAN WITH AN ISSUE OF BLOOD. 20i 


hlood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many 
‘physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing 
bettered, hut rather grew worseM This woman, afflicted so 
long*, who had suffered much from her disease, perhaps 
more from her physicians,^ all whose means had been 
consumed in costly remedies and in the vain quest of some 
cure, ^ when she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, 
and touched his garment; for she said. If I may touch but 
his clothes, I shall be wholel Her faith, who so argued, was 
most real; we have the Lord’s own testimony to this thy 
faith hath saved thee’) ; while yet her conception of the 
manner of the working of Christ’s healing power was a 
material conception and not unmingled with error. He 
healed, as she must have supposed, by no power of his 
holy will, hut rather by a certain magical influence and 
virtue which dwelt in Him, and which He diffused round 
about Him. If she could put herself in relation with this, 
she would obtain all that she desired.^ It is possible too 

of inexplicable difficulties, told by Eusebius (^Ilist. Eccl. vii. i8), of a 
statue, or rather two statues, in brass, one of Christ, another of this 
woman kneeling to Ihm, which existed in his time at Caesarea Paneas, 
and which, according to tradition, had been raised by her in thankful 
commemoration of her healing: see the loth excursus in the Annotations 
(Oxford, 1842) to Dr. Burton’s Eusebius. The belief that these statues 
did refer to this event was so widely spread as to cause Julian, in his 
hatred against all memorials of Christianity, or according to others. 
Maximinus, to destroy them. There can be no doubt that a group, 
capable of being made to signify this event, was there, for Eusebius 
speaks as having himself seen it ,* but the correctness of the application 
is far more questionable. Justin Martyr’s mistake of a statue erected at 
Rome to a Sabine deity (Semoni Sanco) for one erected in honour of 
Simon Magus, shows how little critical the early Christians sometimes 
were in matters of this kind (see Deyling, Obss. Sac. vol. i. p. 279; 
Muretus, Epistt. 1 . 3, ep. 75). Even Jeremy Taylor, with all his un¬ 
critical allowance of legends, finds this one incredible {Life of Christ, 
part ii. sect. 12, § 20). 

^ The apocryphal report of Pilate to Tiberius forcibly paints her ex¬ 
treme emaciation, WC Traerav r-qv tS)v oarfiov ap/jovlav (jjaivecrOaif Kui vtXov 
tiKqv Stavyb^ttv (Thilo, Cod. Apocryph, vol. i. p. 808). 

^ See Lightfoot {Hor. Heb. in Marc. v. 26) for an extraordinary list 
of remedies in use for this disorder. 

® She partook, as Grotius well remarks, in the notion of the philoso¬ 
phers, Deum agere omnia (pvati, ob fiovXrjcTu, 


202 


THE HEALING OF THE WOMAN 


that she ‘ touched the hem of his garment ’ (cf. Mark vi. 36), 
not merely as its uttermost part, that therefore which she, 
timidly drawing near, could most easily reach, hut as 
attributing a peculiar sanctity to it. For this hem, or blue 
fringe on the borders of the garment, was put there by 
divine command, and served to remind the Jewish wearer 
of the special relation to God in which he stood (hTum. xv. 
37-40; Deut. xxii. 12). Those, therefore, who would fain 
persuade the world that they desired never to have this 
out of their remembrance, were wont to make broad, or to 
‘enlarge, the borders of their garments’ (Matt, xxiii. 5). 
But the faith of this woman, thoiigh thus imperfect in its 
form, and though it did not, like a triumphant flood-tide, 
bear her over the peculiar difficulties which beset her, a 
woman, coming to acknowledge a need such as hers, W9;S 
yet in its essence most true. It obtained, therefore, what 
it sought; it was the channel to her of the blessing which 
she desired. No sooner had she touched the hem of his 
robe than ‘ she felt in her hody that she was healed of that 
'plague,^ ^ 

The boon which she had gotten she would have carried 
away in secret, if she might. But this was not so to be. 
For ‘ Jesus, immediately Tcnowing in Himself that virtue had 
gone out of Him, turned Him about in the press, and said. Who 
touched my clothes ? ’ The Evangelists employ language 
which in a measure falls in with the current of the woman’s 
thoughts; yet we cannot for an instant suppose that 
healing power went forth from the Lord without the tuli 
consent of his will,^—that we have here, on his part, an 
unconscious or involuntary healing, any more than on 

^ 'Atto rijc iin( 7 TiyoCf scil. Qfov, since disease must ever be regarded as 
tbe scourge of God, not always of personal sin, but ever of the sin which 
the one has in common with all; cf. 2 Macc. ix. 11, Qua fiaan^, and 
Ecclus. xl. 9. So -^Eschylus {Sept. adv. Theb.), TrXrjytlg Qtov /xdariyi. 
The word, plague (TrXj/y^, plaga) is itself a witness for this truth. 

* Chrysostom: Hap’ Ikovtoq iXajSe Trjv aoTtjpiav, Kal ov irap aKovrog 
^dei yap tjjp dxf/apsptjy. 


witb: an issue of blood. 


203 


another occasion, when we read that ‘ the whole multi¬ 
tude sought to touch Him, for there went virtue out 
of Him, and healed them all’ (Luke vi. 19). Lor if 
power went forth from Him to heal, without reference, 
on his part, to the spiritual condition of the person 
that was its subject, the ethical, which is ever the most 
important part of the miracle, would at once disappear. 
But He who saw Nathanael under the fig-tree (John i. 
48), who ‘ needed not that any should testify of man, 
for He knew what was in man ’ (John ii. 25), must 
have known of this woman how sorely in her body she 
required his help, and how in her spirit she possessed that 
faith which was the one channel of communication between 
Him and any human need. Nor may his question, ‘ Who 
touc\ed my clothes ? ’ be urged as implying that He was 
ignorant who had so done, and only obscurely apprehended 
that something had taken place. It was asked, as the sequel 
abundantly proves, with quite another purpose than this. 
Had she succeeded in carrying away in secret that good 
which she had gotten, it would have failed to be at all that 
excellent gift to her which her Saviour intended that it 
should be. Lor this it was needful that she should be 
drawn from her hiding-place, and compelled to avouch 
both what she had sought, and what had found, of help 
and healing from Him. With as little force can it be 
urged that it would have been inconsistent with absolute 
truth for the Lord to profess ignorance, and to ask the 
question which He did ask, if all the while He perfectly 
knew what He thus seemed implicitly to say that He did not 
know. A father coming among his children, and demand¬ 
ing, Who committed this fault? himself conscious, even 
while he asks, but at the same time willing to bring the 
culprit to a free confession, and so to put him in a pardon¬ 
able state, does he in any way violate the laws of highest 
truth? The same offence might be found in Elisha’s 
‘Whence comest thou, Gehazi? ’ (2 Kin. v. 25), when his 


204 


THE HEALING OF THE WOMAN 


heart went with his servant all the way that he had gone; 
and even in the question of God Himself to Adam, ‘Where 
art thou ? ’ (Gen. iii. 9), and to Cain, ‘ Where is Abel thy 
brother?’ (Gen. iv. 9). In every case there is a moral 
purpose in the question,—an opportunity given at the 
latest moment for a partial making good of the error by 
its unreserved confession, an opportunity which they whose 
examples have been here adduced, suffered to escape; but 
which this woman had grace given her to use. 

But this question itself, ‘ Who touched my clothes ? ’ or as 
it is in St. Luke, ‘ Who touched Me ? ’ when indeed the 
whole multitude was rudely pressing upon and crowding 
round Him, may suggest, and has suggested, some profit¬ 
able reflections. Out of that thronging multitudo one only 
‘ touched ’ with the touch of faith. She can scarcely Jiave 
been the only sick and suffering one in all that multitude; 
there may very well have been others there with complaints 
as inveterate as hers; but these, though as near or nearer 
in body, yet lacked that faith which would have been the 
connecting link between Christ’s power and their need ; and 
thus they crowded upon Him, but did not touch Him, did 
not so touch that virtue went forth from Him on them. It 
is evermore thus in his Church. Many ‘ throng ’ Christ; 
his in name; near to Him outwardly; in actual contact 
with the sacraments and ordinances of his Church; yet not 
touching Him, because not drawing nigh in faith, not look¬ 
ing for, and therefore not obtaining, life and healing from 
Him, and through these.^ 

‘ Augustine {Serm. Ixii. 4): Quasi enim sic ambularet, ut a nullo 
prorsus corpore tangeretur, ita dicit, Quis me tetigit ? Et illi, Turbse te 
comprimunt. Et tanquam diceret Dominus, Tangentem qusero, non pre- 
mentem. Sic etiam nunc est corpus ejus, id est, Ecclesia ejus. Tangit 

earn fides paucorum, premit turba multorum.Caro enim premit, 

fides tangit; and again {Scrm, Ixxvii. 4) : Corpus ergo Christi multi 
moleste premunt, pauci salubriter tangunt. Elsewhere he makes her 
the symbol of all the faithful {Serm. ccxlv. 3) : Illi premunt, ista tetigit; 
Judsei affligunt, Ecclesia credidit; cf. Gregory the Great, Moral, iii. 20; 
XX. 17. Chrysostom has the same antithesis: 'O TriaTtvwv hq rov :£,<orTipa 
UTTrsTai avrov' o Sk dtriorwr 6K(f3tt avrhv tca'i Xvirti. Chemnitz {Ilarm. 
Evang. d/): Ita quoque in Ecclesia multi Christo approximant, externis 



WITH AN ISSUE OF BLOOD. 


205 


The disciples, and Peter as their spokesman, wonder at 
the question, and a certain sense of the unreason of it as 
it presents itself to them, marks their reply: ‘ Thou seest 
the multitude thronging Thee, and sayest Thou, Who touched 
Me ? ’ He, however, re-affirms the fact, ‘ Somebody hath 
touched Me; for I 'perceive that virtue is gone out of Me.^ 
And now the woman, perceiving’ that any further attempt 
at concealment was useless, that to repeat the denial which 
she probably had made with the rest, for ‘ all denied ’ (Luke 
viii. 45), would profit her nothing; unable, too, to escape 
his searching glance, for ^ He looked round about to see her ’ 
(Mark v. 32), ‘came trembling, and falling down before Him, 
she declared unto Him,’ and this ‘ before all the people, for 
what cause she had touched Him, and how she was healed im¬ 
mediately.’ Olshausen traces very beautifully the grace 
which reigns in this miracle, and in the order of the cir¬ 
cumstances of it. This woman would have home away a 
maimed blessing, hardly a blessing at all, had she been 
suffered to bear it away in secret and unacknowledged, and 
without being brought into any personal communion with 
her Healer. She hoped to remain in concealment out of 
a shame, which, however natural, was untimely in this the 
crisis of her spiritual life; but this hope of hers is gra¬ 
ciously defeated. Her heavenly Healer draws her from 
the concealment she would have chosen; but even here, so 
far as possible, He spares her; for not before, but after she 
is healed, does He require the open confession from her lips. 
She might have found it perhaps altogether too hard, had 
He demanded this of her before : but, waiting till the cure 
is accomplished. He helps her through the narrow way. 


auribus verbum salutis accipiunt, ore suo sacramentum corporis et san¬ 
guinis ipsius manducant et bibunt, nullam tamen efficaciam ex eo perci- 
piunt, nec sentiunt fluxum ilium peccatorum suorum sisti et exsiccari. 
Unde illud ? Quia destituuntur vera fide, quae sola ex hoc fonte haurit 
gratiam pro gratia. 


;o6 


THE HEALING OF THE WOMAN 


Altogether spare her this painful passage He could not, for 
it pertained to her birth into the new life.' 

And now He dismisses her with words of gracious en¬ 
couragement : ‘ Daughter, he of good comfort j thy faith hath 
made thee whole" ^ (Luke vii. 50 ; xvii. 19 ; xviii. 42). Her 
faith had made her whole, and Christ’s virtue had made 
her whole.® Hot otherwise we say that we are justified by 
faith, and justified by Christ; faith not being itself the 
blessing; but the organ by which the blessing is received; 
the right hand of the soul, which lays hold on Him and on 
his righteousness. ^ Go in peace this is not merely, ‘ Go 
with a blessing,’ but, ‘ Enter into peace, as the element 
in which thy future life shall move;— and he whole of thy 
■plague," —which promise was fulfilled to her; for ‘the 
woman was w,ade whole from that hour" 

Theophylact traces a mystical meaning in this miracle. 
The complaint of this woman represents the ever-fiowing 
fountain of sin; the physicians under whom she was 
nothing bettered, the world’s prophets and sages, who, 
with all their medicines, their religions and their philoso¬ 
phies, prevailed nothing to stanch that fountain of evil in 
man’s heart. To touch Christ’s garment is to believe in 
his Incarnation, wherein He, first touching us, enabled us 


^ Sedulius, then, has exactly missed the point of the narrative, when 
of the Lord he says. 


.furtumqne fidele 

Laudat, et ingen use tribuit sua vota rapinse; 


her fault lying in this, that she sought as this furhirn, what she should 
have claimed openly: and no less St. Bernard {De Divers. Serm. xcix.), 
who makes her the figure of those who would do good hiddenly, avoiding 
all human applause: Sunt alii qui nonnulla bona occulte faciunt, sed 
tamen furari [regnum cselorum] dicuntur, quia laudem humanam vitantes, 
solo divino testimonio contenti sunt. Horum figuram tenuit mulier in 
Evangelic, &c. Rather she is the figure of those who would get good 
hiddenly, and without an open profession of their faith, who believe in 
their hearts, but shrink from confessing with their lips, that Jesus Christ 
is Lord, forgetting that both are needful (Rom. x. 9). 

* Tertuliian, Adv. Marc. iv. 20. 

* Her faith, cpyat iKwc, Christ’s virtue, ivtpyrjTLKiog, This, as the causa 
efficiens; that, as the conditio sine qua non. 



WITH AN ISSUE OF BLOOD. 


207 


also to touch. Him : and on this that healing, which in all 
those other things had been vainly sought, follows at once. 
And if we keep in mind how her uncleanness separated 
her off as one impure, we shall have here an exact picture 
of the sinner, drawing nigh to the throne of grace, but out 
of the sense of his impurity not ^with boldness,’ rather 
with fear and trembling, hardly knowing what there he 
shall expect; but who is welcomed there, and, all his 
carnal doubtings and questionings at once chidden and 
expelled, dismissed with the word of an abiding peace 
resting upon him. 


8 . THE OPENING OF THE EYES OF TWO 
BLIND IN THE HOUSE, 

IVIatt. ix. 27-31. 

W E have here the first of those many healings of the 
blind recorded (Matt. xii. 22; xx. 30; xxi. 14; 
John ix.) or alluded to (Matt. xi. 5; Luke vii. 21) in the 
Gospels ; each of them a literal fulfilment of that prophetic 
■word of Isaiah, concerning the days of Messiah: ‘ Then the 
eyes of the blind shall be opened ’ (xxxv. 5). Frequent as 
these miracles are, there yet will not one of them be found 
without distinguishing features of its owu. That they 
should be so numerous is nothing wonderful, "whether we 
regard the fact from a natural or a spiritual point of view. 
Eegarded naturally, their number need not surprise us, if 
we keep in mind how far commoner a Calamity is blindness 
in the East than with us.* Eegarded from a spiritual point 
of view, we need only remember how constantly sin is con¬ 
templated in Scripture as a moral blindness (Deut. xxviii. 

^ For this there are many causes. The dust and flying sand, pulverized 
and reduced to minutest particles, enters the eyes, causing inflammations 
which, being neglected, end frequently in total loss of sight. The sleeping 
in the open air, on the roofs of the houses, and the consequent exposure of 
the eyes to the noxious nightly dews, is another source of this malady. A 
modern traveller calculates that there are four thousand blind in Cairo 
alone; and Palgrave, writing of the diseases of Arabia {Journey through 
Aralia, vol. ii. p. 34) has these observations: ^ Ophthalmia is fearfully 
prevalent, and goes on unchecked in many instances to the worst results. 
It would be no exaggeration to say that one adult out of every five has 
his eyes more or less damaged by the consequences of this disease.’ In 
Syria, it is true, the proportion of blind is not at all so groat, yet there 
also the calamity is far commoner than in western lands; so that we find 
humane regulations concerning the blind, as a class, in the Law (I^ev. 
xix. 14; Deut. xxvii. 18). 


OPENING THE EYES OF TWO BLIND, 209 


29; Isai. lix. 10; Job xii. 25; Zepb. i. 17), and deliverance 
from sin as a removal of this blindness (Isai. xxix. 18 ; xlii. 
18; xliii. 8 ; Epbes. i. 8 ; Matt. xv. 14); at once to perceive 
bow well it became Him wbo was ^ the Light of tbe world ’ 
often to accomplish works which symbolized so well that 
higher work of illumination which He came into the world 
to fulfil. 

‘And when Jesus departed thence^ —from the house of 
Jairus, Jerome supposes; but too much stress must not be 
laid on the connexion in which St. Matthew sets the mi¬ 
racle, nor the conclusion certainly drawn that he intended 
to place it in such immediate relation of time and place 
with that other which he had just told —‘ two hlind men fol¬ 
lowed Him, crying and saying, Thou Son of David, have mercy 
on us.^ In that ‘ Son of David ’ they recognize Him as the 
promised Messiah (Matt. xxi. 9; xxii. 42; cf. Ezek. xxxiv. 
23, 34). But their faith must not stop short in this mere 
confession of Him ; it must be further tried; and the Lord 
proceeds to try it, though not so rudely as He tried that of 
the Syrophcenician woman at a later day. Not all at once 
do they obtain their petition; the Lord seeming at first 
rather to withdraw Himself from them, suffering them to 
cry after Him, and for a while paying no regard to their 
cries. It is only ‘ when He was come into the house,’ and ^ the 
hlind men came to Him ’ there, so testifying the earnestness 
of their deshes and the faith of their hearts, that He yields 
to them the blessing which they sought. ‘ He must obtain 
too, ere that may be, a further confession from their own 
lips: ^Believe ye that I am able to do this?’ And it is 
only after they, by their ‘ Tea, Lord,’ have avouched that 
they had faith to be healed, that the blessing is theirs. 
Then indeed ^ He touched their eyes’ and that simple touch 
was enough, unsealing as it did for them the closed organs 

1 Calvin: Re igitur et verbis examinare voliiit eorum fidem: sus¬ 
penses enim tenens, imo prseteriens quasi non exaudiat, patientiaa 
ipsorum experimentum capit, et qualem in ipsorum animis radicem 
egerit tides. 


210 OPENING THE EYES OF TWO BLIND. 


of vision (cf. Matt. xx. 34). On other occasions He uses 
as conductors of his power, and helps to the faith of those 
who should be healed, some further means,—the clay 
mingled with spittle (John ix, 6, 7), or the moisture of his 
mouth alone (Mark viii. 23). We nowhere read of his 
opening the hliud eyes simply by his word, although this 
of course lay equally within the range of his power. The 
words which accompany the act of grace, ‘ According to your 
faith he it unto youf are instructive for the insight they 
give us into the relation of man’s faith and God’s gift. The 
faith, which in itself is nothing, is yet the organ for re¬ 
ceiving everything. It is the conducting link between 
man’s emptiness and God’s fulness ; and herein is all the 
value which it has. It is the bucket let down into the 
fountain of God’s grace, without which the man could never 
draw water of life from the wells of salvation; for the wells 
are deep, and of himself man has nothing to draw with. 
It is the purse, which cannot 5 f itself make its owner rich, 
and yet effectually enriches him by the treasure which it 
contains.^ 

^And Jesus straitly charged them, saying, See that no man 
Tcnow it^ (cf. Mark v. 43 ; Matt. xvii. 9). ^But they, when 
they were departed, spread abroad his fame in all that 
country."^ It is very characteristic, and rests on very 
profound differences between Eoman Catholics and 
ourselves, that of these interpreters almost all—I am 
aware of no single exception—applaud rather than con¬ 
demn these men for not adhering strictly to Christ’s 
command, his earnest, almost threatening,^ injunction of 

^ Faith, the opyavov XfiirriKov, nothing in itself, yet everything because 
it places us in living connexion with Hint in whom every good gift is 
stored. Thus on this passage Chemnitz {Harm. Evang. 68): Tides est 
instar haustri gratiae caelestis et salutis nostrae, quo ex inscrutabili et 
inexhausto divinae misericordiae et bonitatis fonte, ad quem aliter pene- 
trare non possumus, haurimus et ad nos attrahimus quod nobis salutare 
est. Calvin (Inst. iii. 11,7): Fides etiamsi nullius per se dignitatis sit, vel 
pretii, nos justificat, Christum afierendo, sicut olla pecuniis referta homi.. 
nem locupletat. 

* ’Eielipi.firjnaTo avToiig. Suidas explains tp[ipipaa9ai = geTa aTreiXjjc 


OPENING THE EYES OF TWO BLIND. 2ii 


silence ;—tliat the teachers in that Church of will-worship 
see in their disobedience the irrepressible overflowings of 
grateful hearts, which, as such, should be regarded not as 
a fault, but a merit. Some, alas ! of the ancients, Theo- 
phjlact, for instance, do not shrink from affirming that 
the men did not disohej at all in publishing the miracle ; 
that Christ never intended them to observe his precept 
about silence, but gave it out of humility, being the better 
pleased that it was not observed.^ But of the interpreters 
of the Reformed Church, whose first principle is to take 
God’s Word as absolute rule and law, and to worship Him 
not with self-devised services, hut after the pattern which 
He has shown, all stand fast to this, that obedience is better 
than sacrifice, even though the sacrifice be intended for 
God’s special honour (i Sam. xv. 21). They see, therefore, 
in this publishing of the miracle, despite of Christ’s word 
to the contrary, a blemish in the perfectness of their faith 
who thus disobeyed; a fault which remained a fault, even 
while they recognize it as one which only grateful hearts 
could have committed. 

ii'TsWecrOai^ }iet avcfTrjoorriToq tTriTifxav. See more on this word in a note 
on the raising of Lazarus. 

^ Thus Aquinas {Summ. Theol. 2“ 2®, qu. 104, art. 4): Dominus caecis 
dixit ut miraculum occultarent, non quasi intendens eos per virtutem 
divini praecepti ohligarej sed sicut Gregorius dicit 19 Morale servis suis 
se sequentibus exemplum dedit, ut ipsi quidem virtutes suas occultare 
desiderent, et tamen ut alii eorum exemplo proficiant, prodantur inviti. 
Of. Maldonatus, in loc. 


10 


9. TSE HEALING OF THE PARALYTIC, 
Matt. ix. i-8 j Makk ii. i-ia ; Luke v. 17-26.* 


T he account of St. Luke would leave us altogetlier in 
ignorance where tliis miracle of healing took place; but 
from St. Matthew we learn that it was in ‘ his own city/ 
by which we should understand Capemaum, even if St. 
Mark had not named it, for as Bethlehem was the birth¬ 
place of Christ, and Mazareth his nursing-place, so Caper¬ 
naum his dwelling-place. We have then here one of the 
‘ mighty works ’ with which at a later day He upbraided 
that greatly favoured but impenitent city (Matt. xi. 23). 

^ A^id it came to pass on a certain day as He was teaching, 
that there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting hy, 
which were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judcea, 
and Jerusalem,^ It may have been a conference, more or 
less friendly upon the part of these, which had brought 
together as listeners and spectators a multitude so vast 
that all avenues of approach to the house were blocked 
up ; ‘ there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as 
about the door; ’ ^ and thus for later comers no oppor¬ 
tunity, by any ordinary way, of near access to the Lord 
(cf. Matt. xii. 46, 47). Among these were some ^ bringing 

* Chrysostom (in 3 Iatth, Horn. 29) warns his hearers against the con¬ 
founding of this miracle of healing with that of the impotent man at 
Bethesda, and then finding discrepancies between the one narrative and 
the other. The confusion, one would think, is so little likely to occur as 
hardly to be worth the complete refutation which he gives it It is 
found, however, in the apocryphal Evangelium Nicodemi (see Thilo, Cod. 
Apocryph. vol. i. p. 556). 

* T(i irpoQ Tt'jv Qvpav^ scil. pLipt} — Trp 6 Qvpov, vestibulum, atrium. 


THE HEALING OF THE PAUALYTIC, 


213 


one sick of the palsy I Only St. Mark records for us tkat 
he ‘ was home of four ; ’ he and St. Luke the novel method 
which they took to bring him whom they bore within that 
circle of healing of which the Lord was the living centre; 

‘ When they could not come nigh unto Him for the press, they 
uncovered the roof where He was ; and when they had hrohen 
it up, they let down the hed wherein the sicJc of the palsy lay I 
They first ascended to the roof; for, in Puller’s words, 
‘ love will creep, but faith will climh, where it cannot go ; ’ 
yet this was not so difficult, because commonly there was 
a flight of steps on the outside of the house, reaching to 
the roof; in addition to, or sometimes instead of, an in¬ 
ternal communication of the same kind. Such every 
traveller in those parts of southern Spain which bear a 
permanent impress of Eastern habits will have seen. Our 
Lord assumes such when He gives this counsel, ^ Let him 
which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing 
out of his house ’ (Matt. xxiv. 17), he shall take the nearest 
and shortest way of escaping into the country: but he 
could only avoid the necessity of descending through the 
house by the existence of such steps as these.^ Some will 
have it that the bearers, having thus reached the roof, let 
down their sick through the grating or trap-door, already 
existing there (cf. 2 Kin. i. 2), or at most, enlarged such 
an aperture, till it would allow the passage of their sick 
man and his bed. Others,^ that Jesus was sitting in the 
open court, round which an Eastern house commonly is 

1 The same must have existed in a Homan house. A witness, whom 
it is important to preserve from being tampered with, is shut up in the 
chamber adjoining the roof (coenaculum super sedes),—and, to make all 
sure, scalis ferentibus in publicum obseratis, aditu in aedes verso (Livy, 
xxxix. 14; cf. Becker, Galius, vol. i.4). 94). 

2 Shaw, for instance, quoted by Hosenmuller {Alte und Neue Morgen- 
land, vol. V. p. 129). He makes to gkaov to signify the central court, 
impluvium, cava aedium. And so, too, Titus Bostrensis (in Cramer’s 
Catena)'. Ei'/rot I' av ng vTraiOpov tlvai tottov, tig ov did tu>v Kepdfiujv 
KaTtPijSaffav TrjV KXivpv too irapaXurov, godep TravTtXuig rrjg orsyrjg avarpt- 
yavTsg. But against this use of tig tq gkaov, or rather /w the common 
one, see Luke iv. 35; Mark iii. 3; xiv. 60. 


214 THE HEALIH 3 i OF THE PARALYTIC, 


built; that to this they obtained access by the roof, and 
having broken through the breast-work or battlement 
(Dent. xxii. 8) made of tiles, which guarded the roof, and 
withdrawn the linen awning which was stretched over the 
court, let down their burden in the midst. But all this is 
without necessity and without warrant. St. Mark can 
mean nothing else than that a portion of the actual roof 
was removed, and so the bed on which the palsied man 
lay let down before the Lord.^ This will seem less 
strange, if only we keep in mind that in all likelihood an 
upper chamber [virepoyov) was the scene of this miracle. 
This, as the most retired (2 Kin. iv. 10, LXX; Acts ix. 
37), and often the largest room in the house, extending 
over its whole area, was much used for purposes such as 
now drew the Lord and his hearers together ^ (Acts i. 13 ; 

XX. 8). 

He who never takes ill that faith which brings men to 
Him, but only the unbelief which keeps them from Him, is 
in nothing offended at this interruption; yea, rather 
beheld with an eye well pleased the boldness of this act of 
theirs : ^ Jesus, seeing their faith, said unto the side of the 
•palsy. Son, he of good cheer; thy sins he, forgiven^ thee ;’or 
as it is in St. Luke, ^ Man, thy sins are forgiven thee.' 
But as He addresses another sorrowful soul, ‘ Daughter, 
be of good comfort ’ (Matt. ix. 22), probably the tenderei 
appellation here also found place. Had we only the ac¬ 
count of St. Matthew, we might be at a loss to understand 
wherein their special faith consisted, or why their faith, 

1 So Winer, Realwdrterhuch, s. v. Dach', De Wette, Archdologie, p 
118, sqq. 

* Vitringa, De Synag. p. 145, sqq. 

® A(peu)VTat (cf. Luke vii. 48 ; i Jokn ii. 12): the old grammarians are 
not at one in the explanation of this form. Some make it = dcpwvTai, 2 
aor. conj., as in Homer dpbj for dfij. But others more rightly explain it 
as the prseter. indie, pass. = dtpnvTat; though of these again some find in 
it an Attic, others, more correctly, a Boric form: cf. Herodotus, ii. 165 
dAu)VTai. This perfect passive will then stand in connexion with the 
perfect active depitoKa for d(ptlKa (Winer, Grammatih, p. 77). 


THE HEALING OF THE PAEALYTIC. 215 

more than that of many others who brought their sick to 
Jesus (cf. Mark vh 55, 56; vii. 32), should have been 
noted; but the other Evangelists explain what he has left 
obscure. From them we learn that it was a faith which 
overcame hindrances, and was not to be turned aside by- 
difficulties.^ ‘ Their faith ^ is not, as Jerome and Ambrose 
understand it, the faith of the bearers only. To them the 
praise justly was due ; ^ but the sick man must have ap¬ 
proved what they did, or it would not have been done: 
and Chrysostom, with more reason, affirms that it was 
alike their faith and his, and his more eminently even 
than theirs,^ which the Lord saw, approved, and re¬ 
warded. 

In what follows we have a beautiful example of the way 
in which the Giver of all good things gives before we ask, 
and better than we ask. This poor suppliant had as yet 
asked nothing; save, indeed, in the dumb asking of that 
earnest effort to come near to the Lord; and all that in 
that he dared to ask, certainly all that his friends and 
bearers sought for him, was that he might be healed of 
his palsy. Yet in him, no doubt, there was a deep feeling 
of the root out of which all sickness grows, namely, out of 
sin; perhaps in his own sickness he recognized the penalty 
of some especial sin whereof his conscience accused him.'* 
‘ Eon, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee,’ are words 
addressed to one evidently burdened with a more intoler¬ 
able weight than that of his bodily infirmities. Some 
utterance upon his part of a penitent and contrite heart 

^ Bengel: Per omnia fides ad Christum penetrat. Gerhard {Harm' 
Emng. 43): Pictura est, quomodo in tentationihus et calamitatibua 
ad Christum nobis conentur intercludere hominum judicia, quales 
fuerunt amici Jobi, et qui Ps. iii. 3 dicunt: Non est salus ipsi in Dec 
ejus. Item: Legis judicium et proprise conscientiae accusationes. Et 
quomodo per ilia omnia fides perrumpere debeat, ut in conspectum 
Christi Mediatoris se demittat. 

* Tiv'tQ TTKTTOTaToi, as in the Evangelkcm Nicodemi they are called. 

* Ow yap av rjvkax^To xa\aaQi]vat, pp Triarevwv, 

* Bengel: Sine dubio magnus erat peccatorum magnorum sensus in 
iato homine. 


2i6 


THE HEALING OF THE PARALYTIC, 


may very probably have called them out. In other 
instances the forgiveness of sins follows the ontward heal¬ 
ing ; for we may certainly presume that such a forgiveness 
was the portion of the thankful Samaritan (Luke xvii. 19), 
of the impotent man, first healed, and then warned to sin 
no more (John v. 14); but here the remission of sin takes 
the precedence: nor is it hard to perceive the reason. In 
the sufferer’s own conviction there existed so close a con¬ 
nexion between his sin and his sickness, that the bodily 
healing would have been scarcely intelligible to him, 
would have hardly brought home to him the sense of a 
benefit, unless in his conscience he had been also set free ; 
perhaps he was incapable even of receiving the benefit, 
till the message of peace had beeu spoken to his spirit. 
The Epistle of St. James supplies an interesting parallel 
(v. 14, 15), where the same inner connexion is assumed 
between the raising of the sick and the forgiving of his 
sin. Those others, with a slighter sense than this man of 
the relation between their sin and their suffering, were 
not first forgiven and then healed; but thankfulness for 
their bodily healing first made them receptive of that 
better blessing, the ‘ grace upon grace,’ which afterwards 
they obtained. 

The absolving words are not o'ptative only, no mere 
desire, that so it might be, but declaratory that so it was; 
the man’s sins were forgiven. ISTor yet were they declara¬ 
tory only of something which past in the mind and inten¬ 
tion of God; but, even as the words were spoken, there 
was shed abroad in his heart the sense of forgiveness and. 
reconciliation with God. Eor indeed God’s justification 
of a sinner is not merely a word spoken about him, but a 
word spoken to him and in him; not an act of God’s im- 
manent in Himself, but transitive upon the sinner. In it 
the love of God, and with the love the consciousness of 
that love, is shed abroad in his heart upon whose behalf 
the absolving decree has been uttered (Eom. v. 5). The 


TEE HEALING OF TEE PARALYTIC. 217 


niurmurers and cavillers understood rightly what the Lord 
meant by these words; that He, so speaking, did not 
merely wish and desire that this man’s sins might be for¬ 
given him; that He did not, as the Church does now, in 
the name of another and wielding a delegated power, but 
in his own name, forgive him. They also understood 
rightly of this forgiveness of sins, that it is a divine pre¬ 
rogative ; that, as no man can remit a debt save he to 
whom it is due, so no one can forgive sin save He against 
whom all sin is committed, that is, God; and out of this 
conviction, most true in itself, but most false in their pre¬ 
sent application of it, ‘ certain of the Scribes sitting there ’ 
said within themselves, ‘ Why doth this man thus speah 
blasphemies (cf. Luke vii. 49 ; John x. 33) ? Who can forgive 
sins but God only ? ’ 

Olshausen bids us note here the profound insight into 
the relations between God and the creature, involved in 
the scriptural use of the word ‘ blasphemy; ’ a use of 
which profane antiquity knew nothing. With it ^to 
blaspheme ’ meant only to speak evil of a person ^ (a use 
not foreign to Scripture, i Cor. iv. 13 ; Tit. iii. 2 ; 2 Pet. 
ii. 2; Jud. 8), and then, to speak something of an evil 
omen. The monotheistic religion alone included in blas¬ 
phemy not merely words of cursing and outrage against 
the name of God, but all snatchings on the part of the 
creature at honours which of right belonged only to the 
Creator {Matt. xxvi. 65; John x. 36).* Had He who in 
his own name declared, ‘ Thy sins be forgiven thee,^ been 
less than the only-begotten Son of the Father, the sharer 
in all prerogatives of the Godhead, He would indeed have 
spoken blasphemies, as they deemed. Believing Him 
only a man, they were right in saying He blasphemed. 
Their sin was not in this, but in that self-chosen blind- 

* h\aa<pr]iiHV as opposed to tvfprjfisly, 

2 Bengel: Blasphemia est, cum I. Deo tribuuntur indigna. ii. Deo 
negantur digna. iii. Dei propria communicantur iis, quibus non com- 
petunt. 


2i8 the healing of THE PAFALYTIG, 


ness of theirs, whicli would not allow them to recognize 
any glory in Him higher than man’s; in the pride and 
the obstinacy which led them, having arrived at a fore¬ 
gone conclusion as to what kind of Saviour they would 
have, wilfully to close their eyes to all in their own Scrip¬ 
tures which set Him forth as other than they had them¬ 
selves resolved He should be.^ 

It is not for nothing that the Lord is said to have 
ceived in Ms spirit that they so reasoned within themselvesA 
His soul was human, but his ‘ spirit ’ was divine; and by 
this divine faculty He perceived the unspoken counsels and 
meditations of their hearts^ (John vi. 6i), and perceiving 
laid them bare: just as in another place He is said to have 
‘ answered ’ the unuttered as though it had been the uttered 
thought of the Pharisee at whose table He sat (Luke vii. 40). 
They should be doubly convinced; and first by the proof 
which He gave that the thoughts and meditations of all 
hearts were open and manifest to Him, while yet it is God 
only who searches into these (i Sam. xvi. 7 ; i Kin. viii. 39; 
I Chron. xxviii. 9; 2 Chron. vi. 30; Jer. xvii. 10; Ezek. 
ii. 5 ; Prov. xv. ii ; Acts i. 24); only of the Divine Word 
could it be affirmed that ^ He is a discerner of the thoughts 
and intents of the heart’ (Heb. iv. 12).* ‘ Why reason ye 

these things in your hearts ? ’ this was their first conviction. 
And then the second: ‘ Whether is it easier to say to the 
sicJc of the palsy. Thy sins he forgiven thee; or io say. Arise, 
and taJce up thy led, and walk ? ’ He indicates to them 
here the exact line in which their hard and imrighteous 
thoughts of Him were at that moment travelling. Some- 

' Augustine {Enarr. iii. in Ps. xxxvi. 25): Quis potest dimittere 
peccata [inquiunt] nisi solus Deus ? Et quia ille erat Deus, talia 
cogitantes audiebat. Hoc verum de Deo cogitabant, sed Deum prse- 
sentem non videbant. Fecit ergo . . . quod viderent, et dedit quod 
crederent. 

* Grotius: Non ut propbetse per afflatum, sed suo spiritu. 

^ Gerhard {Harm. Evany. 43): Jesus igitur exponens Pharisjeis quid 
taciti apud se in inti mis cordium recessibus cogitabant, ostendit se plus 
esse quam hominem; et eadem potestate, divina scilicet, qua secreta 
cordium videat, se etiam peccata remittere posse. 


THE HEALING OF THE PARALYTIC. 219 


tliiug of tliis sort they were raurmnring within themselves, 

‘ These honours are easily snatched. Any pretender may 
go about the world, saying to this man and that, “ TAy 
sins he forgiven thee.” But where is the evidence that his 
word is allowed and ratified in heaven, that this which is 
spoken on earth is sealed in heaven ? The very nature of 
the power which this man claims secures him from con¬ 
viction ; for this releasing of a man from the condemnation 
of his sin is an act wrought in the inner spiritual worlds 
attested by no outer and visible sign; therefore it is easily 
challenged, since any disproof of it is impossible.’ And 
our Lord’s answer, meeting this evil thought in their 
hearts, is in fact this: ‘ You accuse Me that I am claiming 
a safe power, since, in the very nature of the benefit 
bestowed, no sign follows, nothing to testify whether I 
have challenged it rightfully or not. I will therefore put 
Myself now to a more decisive proof. I will speak a word, 
I will claim a power, which if I claim falsely, I shall be 
convinced upon the instant as an impostor and a deceiver. 
But that ye may Tcnow that the Son of man hath power on 
earth to forgive sins {He saith to the sich of the palsy), I say 
unto thee. Arise, and taJce up thy hed,^ and go thy way into 
thine house.^ By the effects, as they follow or do not 
follow, you may judge whether I have a right to say to 
him. Thy sins he forgiven thee.^ ® 

^ Kpd( 3 j 3 aTOQ, or as Tiscbendorf in all the best MSS. finds it, icpd( 3 aTToc, 
= grahatvLs (in Luke KXividwv), a mean pallet used bj the poorest, = 
(TKigTrovg, daicdvTrjQ. 'It is a Macedonian word, entirely rejected bj Greek 
purists (Becker, Charicles, \ol. ii. p. 121; Lobeck, Phrynichics, p. 62). 
Sozomen (Hist Reel. i. ii) tells the story of a bishop in Cyprus, who, 
teaching the people from this Scripture, and having to repeat the Lord’s 
words, substituted (XKlfiirovg for KpdiSjSarog, and was rebuked by another 
bishop present, who asked if the word which was good enough for Christ, 
was not good enough for him. 

* Compare Isai. xxxv. 3, LXX, when he recounts the promises of 
Messiah’s time : 'Icrx^crart, avfi/xsi^af, fcai yovara tt ap aXiXv p.kv a. 

® Jerome (Comm, in Matt in loc.): Utrum sint paralytico peccata 
dimissa, solus noverat, qui dimittebat. Surge autem et ambula, tarn ille 
qui consurgebat, quam hi qui consurgentem videbant approbare poterant. 
Fit igitur carnale signum, ut probetur spirituale. Bernard (De Livers. 


220 THE HEALING OF THE PARALYTIC, 


In our Lord’s argument it must be carefully noted that 
He does not ask, ‘ Which is easiest, to forgive sins, or to 
raise a sick man by a vrord ? ’ for that of forgiving could 
not be affirmed to be easier than this of healing; but, 
‘ Which is easiest, to claim this poTver, or to claim that; to 
say, Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, Arise and walk ? ’ 
And He then proceeds; ^ That is easiest, and I will now 
prove my right to say it, by saying with effect and with an 
outward consequence setting its seal to my truth, the 
harder word. Rise up and walh. By doing that which is 
submitted to the eyes of men, I will attest my right and 
power to do that which, in its very nature, lies out of the 
region of visible proofs. By these visible tides of God’s 
grace I wiU give you to know in what way the great 
under-currents of his love are setting, and make clear that 
those and these are alike obedient to my word. From this 
which I will now do openly and before you all, you may 
conclude that it is no “ robbery ” (Phil. ii. 6) upon my part 
to claim also the power of forgiving men their sins.’ ^ 

Serm. xxv.): Blasphemare me blaspliematis, et quasi ad excusandum 
visibilis curationis virtutem, me invisibilem dicitis usurpare. Sed ego 
VOS potius blasphemes esse convinco, signo probans visibili invisibilem 
potestatem. Corn, a Lapide: Qui dicit, Remitto tibi peccata, men- 
dacii argui non potest, sive ea revera remittit, sive non, quia nec pec- 
catum nec peccati remissio oculis videri potest; qui autem dicit para- 
lytico. Surge et ambula, se et famam suam evidenti falsitatis periculo 
exponit; re ipsa enim si paralyticus non surgat, falsitatis, imposturoe 
et mendacii ab omnibus arguetur et convincetur. . . . Unde signanter 
Christus non ait. Quid est facilius, remittere peccata, an sanare paralj’-ti- 
cum, sed dicere, Dimittuntur tibi peccata, an dicere, Surge et ambula ? 
Bengel: In se, utrumque est divinse potestatis et potentiae; et intimus 
in se est peccati et morbi nexus; una, quae utrumque tollit, virtus. Ra- 
tione judicii humani facilius est dicere, Remissa suntj et hoc potest, 
quod minus videtur, qui potest dicere, Surge, quod majus videtur. 

^ Maldonatus, with his usual straightforward meeting of a difficulty, 
observes here, Poterit autem aliquis merito dubitare, quomodo Christus 
quod probandum erat, concludat. Nam si remittere peccata erat re vera 
difficilius, dum experientia curati paralytici docet se quod re ipsa facilius 
est, posse facere: non bene probat posse et se peccata remittere, quod erat 
difficilius. Respondeo, Christum tantum probare voluisse sibi esse cre- 
dendum, quod bene probat ab eo, cujus probatio erat difficilior; quasi 
dicat, Si non fallo cum dico paralytico. Surge et ambula, ubi difficilius 


THE HEALING OF THE PARALYTIC. 221 


Thus, to use a familiar illustration of our Lord’s argument, 
it would be easier for a man, equally ignorant of French 
and Chinese, to claim to Irnow the last than the first; not 
that the language itself is easier; but that, in the one case, 
multitudes could disprove his claim; and, in the other, 
hardly a scholar or two in the land. 

In ^power on earth ^ there lies a tacit opposition to power 
in heaven. ‘ This power is not exercised, as you deem, only 
by God m heaven ; but also by the Son of man on earth, 
You rightly assert that it is only exercised by Him whose 
proper dwelling is in the heavens; but He, who in the 
person of the Son of man, has descended also upon earth, 
has brought down this power with Him here. On earth 
also is One who can speak, and it is done.’ We have at 
Matt. xvi. 19; xviii. 18, ^on earth’ and ‘in heaven,’ set 
over against one another in the same antithesis. The 
parallels, however, are imperfect, since the Church binds 
and looses by a committed, and not an inherent, power; 
as one has beautifully said, Facit in terris opera cselorum, 
but only in the name and by the might of her heavenly 
Head. It at first surprises that as ‘ Son of man ’ He claims 
this power; for this of forgiving sins being a divine attri¬ 
bute, we might expect that He would now call Himself by 
his better name, since only as Son of God such prerogative 
was his.‘ The Alexandrian fathers, in conflict with the 
Hestorians, pressed these words in proof of the entire 
communication of all the properties of Christ’s divine 
nature to his human; so that whatever one had, was so 
far common to both that it might also be predicated of the 

est probare me verum dicere, cur creditis me fallere cum dice, Remittan- 
tur tibi peccata tua P Denique ex re, quse effectu probari potest, in re, 
quse probari non potest, sibi fidem facit. Augustine (Exp. ad Rom. § 23): 
Declaravit ideo se ilia facere in corporibus, ut crederetur animas peccato- 
rum dimissione liberare; id est, ut de potestate visibili potestas invisibilis 
mereretur fidem. 

' See Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 10) for a somewhat different reason 
why the Lord should here call Himself, Son of man. 


222 THE HEALING OF THE PARALYTIC. 


other.^ Thus far assuredly they have right, namely, that 
unless the two natures had been indissolubly knit together 
in a single person, no such language could have been used; 
yet ‘ 8 on of man ’ being the standing title whereby the 
Lord was well pleased to designate Himself, asserting as , 
it did that He was at once one with humanity, and the 
crown of humanity, it is simpler to regard the term here 
as merely equivalent to Messiah, without attempting to 
extort any dogmatic conclusions from it. All which our 
Lord explicitly claimed for Himself in those great dis¬ 
courses recorded John V. 17-23; X. 30-38, He implicitly 
rdaims here. 

And now this word of his is confirmed and sealed by a 
sign following. The man did not refuse to answer this 
appeal: ‘And immediately he arose, tooh up the hed ^ (cf. John 
V. 8 ; Acts ix. 34), and went forth before them all; ’ carrying 
now the bed on which he was lately carried; the couch 
which was before the sign of his sickness being now the 
sign of his cure; and they who just before barred and 
blocked up his path, now making way for him, and allow¬ 
ing free egress from the assembly (cf. Mark x. 48, 49). 

Of the effects of this miracle on the Pharisees nothing 
is told us ; probably there was nothing good to tell. But 
the people, less hardened against the truth, more receptive 
of divine impressions, ‘ were all amazed ’ (cf. Matt, xii, 23; 
Mark i. 27 ; v. 42 ; vi. 51; vii. 37), ‘and they glorified God, 
saying. We never saw it on this fashion^ (cf. Matt. xv. 31 ; 
John xi. 45, 46). The miracle had done its office. The 
beholders marvelled at the wonderful work done before 
their eyes; and this their marvel deepened into holy fear, 
which found its utterance in the ascription of glory to God, 

^ See C^^ril of Alexandria, in Cramer, Catena, in loc. This is the 
communicatio idiomatum. 

® Arnobius (Con. Gen. i. 45), speaking generally of Christ’s healings, 
but with manifest allusion to this: Suos referebant lectos alienis paulo 
ante cervicibus lati. Bengel: Lectulus hominem tuierat; nunc homo 
lectiilum ferebat. 


THE HEALING OF THE PARALYTIC. 223 


‘ who had given such power unto men,^ We need not suppose 
that they very accurately explained to themselves, or could 
have explained to others, their feeling of holy exultation; 
but they felt truly that what was given to one man, to the 
Man Christ Jesus, was given for the sake of all, and given 
ultimately to all, that therefore it was indeed given ^ unto 
men.^ They dimly imderstood that He possessed these 
powers as the true Head and Eepresentative of the race, 
and therefore that these gifts to Him were a rightful sub¬ 
ject of gladness and thanksgiving for every member of that 
race. 


lo. THE CLEANSING OF THE LEFER, 


Matt. viii. 1-4 ; Maek i. 40-45 ; Luke v. i 2- i 6. 

W E are told tliat the ascended Lord confirmed the word 
of his servants with signs following (Mark xvi. 20); 
in the days of his flesh He did the same for his own. His 
discourse upon the Mount, that solemn revision of the 
moral code, lifting it up to a higher level, has scarcely 
ended, when this and other of his most memorable miracles 
are performed. He will thus set his seal to all that He has 
just been teaching, and vindicate his right to speak in the 
language of authority which He has there held ^ (Matt. vii. 
29). As He was descending from the mountain, ^ there came 
a temper and worshipped Him/ one, in the language of St. 
Luke, ‘full of leprosy/ so that it was not a spot here and 
there, but the tetter had spread over his whole body ; he 
was leprous from head to foot. This man had ventured, 
it may be, to linger on the outskirts of the listening crowd, 
and, undeterred by the severity of the closing sentences of 
Christ’s discourse, came now to claim the blessings pro¬ 
mised at its opening to the suffering and the mourning. 

But we shall ill understand this miracle, unless first a 
few words have been said concerning leprosy in general, 
and the meaning of the uncleanness attached to it in the 
Levitical law. The medical details, the distinction between 
one kind of leprosy and another, as between the white 
{\svKrj), which, among the Jews was the most frequent, and 

^ Jerome (in loc.): Rente post praedicationem atque doctrinam signorum 
offertur occasio, ut per virt itum miraciila prseteritus apud audientes sermo 
firmetur. 


THE CLEANSING OF THE LEPER. 


225 


the yet more terrible elephantiasis (thought by many to 
have been that with which Job was visited, and so named 
because in it the feet swelled to an elephantine size), would 
be here out of place. Only it will be necessary to correct 
. a mistake, common to all writers who, like Michaelis, can 
see in the Levitical ordinances little more, for the most 
pai-t, than regulations of police or of a Board of health, or, 
at the highest, rules for the well ordering of an earthly 
society; thus missing altogether a main purpose which 
these ordinances had—namely, that by them men might 
be trained into a sense of the cleaving taint which is 
theirs from birth, into a confession of impurity and of con¬ 
sequent separation from God, and thus into a longing 
after purity and re-union with Him. I refer to the mis¬ 
taken assumption that leprosy was catching from one per¬ 
son to another; and that lepers were so carefully secluded 
from their fellow-men, lest they might communicate the 
poison of the disease to others; as, in like manner, that 
the torn garment, the covered lip, the cry ^ Unclean, un¬ 
clean ’ (Lev. xiii. 45), were warnings to all that they should 
keep aloof, lest unawares touching a leper, or drawing 
into too great a nearness, they should become partakers of 
his disease. So far from any danger of the kind existing, 
nearly all who have looked closest into the matter agree that 
the sickness was incommunicable by ordinary contact from 
one person to another. A leper might transmit it to his 
children,^ or the mother of a leper’s children might take it 
from him; but it was by no ordinary contact communicable 
from one person to another. 

All the notices in the Old Testament, as well as in other 
Jewish books, confirm the statement that we have here 
something very much higher than a mere sanitary regu¬ 
lation. Thus, where the law of Moses was not observed, 
no such exclusion necessarily found place; Haaman the 
leper commanded the armies of Syria (2 Kin. v. i); Gehazi, 

^ See liobirjson, Biblical Researches, vol. i. p. 359. 


126 


TBS' CLEANSING OF THE LEPEU. 


with, his leprosy that never should be cleansed (2 Kin. v. 27), 
talked familiarly with the king of apostate Israel (2 Kin, 
viii. 5). And even where the law of Moses was in force, 
the stranger and the, sojourner were expressly exempted 
from the ordinances relating to leprosy; which could not 
have been, had the disease been contagious, and the mo¬ 
tives of the leper’s exclusion been not religious, but civil.^ 
How, moreover, should the Levitical priests, had the 
disease been this creeping infection, have ever themselves 
escaped it, obliged as they were by their very office to sub¬ 
mit the leper to actual handling and closest examination P 
Lightfoot can only explain this by supposing in their case 
a perpetual miracle. 

But there is no need of this. The ordinances concerning 
leprosy had another and far deeper significance, into which 
it will be needful a little to enter. It is clear that the same 
principle which made all having to do with death, as 
mourning (Lev. xxi. i ; Ezek. xliv. 25), a grave (Luke xi. 
44; Matt, xxiii. 27), a corpse, the bones of a dead man 
(Ezek. xxxix. 12-15 ; 2 Kin. xxiii. 20), the occasions of a 
ceremonial uncleanness, inasmuch as all these were signs 
and consequences of sin, might consistently with this have 
made every sickness an occasion of uncleanness, each of 
these being also death beginning, partial death—echoes in 
the body of that terrible reality, sin in the soul. But in- 

' See a learned dissertation by Bhenferd, Be Lepra Cvtis Behresot'um, 
in Menscben, JVby. Test, ex Tahn. illust. pp. 1086-1089; wbo concludes 
his disquisition on this part of the subject thus: Ex quibus, nisi noa 
omnia fallunt, certe concludimus, praecipuis Judaeorum magistris, tradi- 
tionumque auctoribus nunquam in mentem incidisse uUam de leprm 
contagio suspicionem, omnemque hanc de contagiosa lepra sententiam 
plurimia antiquissimisque scriptoribua seque ,ac Mosi plane fuisse in- 
cognitam. Compare the extract from Balsamon, in Suicer, Thes. s. v. 
XfTTiooc, where, speaking of the custom of the Eastern Church, he says, 
^ They frequent our churches and eat with us, in nothing hindered by 
the disease/ In like manner there was a place for them, though a place 
apart, in the synagogues.—I ought to add that Dr. Belcher, in a very 
learned essay in the Buhlin Quarterly Journal of Medical ScimcefM9.j 
1864, with the title The Hebreto, Medieval and Modern Leprosies Com* 
pared j does not consider that Bhenferd has proved his point. 


THE CLEANSING OF THE LEPER. 


227 


«tead of this, in a gracious sparing of man, and not pushing 
the principle to the uttermost, God took but one sickness, 
one, of these visible outcomings of a tainted nature, in 
which to testify that evil was not from Him, could not 
dwell with Him. He linked this teaching hut with one ; 
by his laws concerning it to train men into a sense of a 
clinging impurity, which needed a Pure and a Purifier to 
overcome and expel, and which nothing short of his taking 
of our flesh could drive out. And leprosy, the sickness of 
sicknesses, was throughout these Levitical ordinances 
selected of God from the whole host of maladies and 
diseases which had broken in upon the bodies of men. 
Bearing his testimony against it. He bore his testimony 
against that out of which every sickness grows, against 
sin ; as not from BUm, as grievous in his sight; and against 
the sickness also itself as grievous, being as it was a visi¬ 
ble manifestation, a direct consequence, of sin, a forerunner 
of that death, which by the portal of disobedience and 
revolt had found entrance into natures created by Him for 
immortality. 

And fearful indeed, as might be expected, was that dis¬ 
ease, round which this solemn teaching revolved. Leprosy 
was nothing short of a living death, a corrupting of all the 
humours, a poisoning of the very springs, of life; a dissolu¬ 
tion little by little of the whole body, so that one limb after 
another actually decayed and fell away. Aaron exactly de¬ 
scribes the appearance which the leper presented to the 
eyes of the beholders, when, pleading for Miriam, he says, 
‘ Let her not be as one dead, of whom the flesh is half 
consumed when he cometh out of his mother’s womb’ 
(Hum. xii. 12). The disease, moreover, was incurable by 
the art and skill of man; ^ not that the leper might not 
return to health; for, however rare, such cases are contem¬ 
plated in the Levitical law. But then the leprosy left the 

1 Cyril of Alexandria calls it TraBog ovk Idm/jor, Dr. THorason (Tlie 
Land and the Book, pt. iv. c. 43) has a tenible account of this disease. 


228 


THE CLEANSING OF THE LEPER. 


man, not in obedience to any skill of the physician, but 
purely and merely through the good will and mercy of God. 
This helplessness of man in the matter dictates the spee.ch 
of Jehoram, who, when Naaman is sent to claim healing 
from him, exclaims, ‘ Am I God, to kiU and to make alive, 
that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his 
leprosy ? ’ (2 Kin. v. 7); as though the king of Syria had 
been seeking to fasten a quarrel upon him. 

The leper, thus fearfully bearing about in the body the 
outward and visible tokens of sin in the soul, was treated 
throughout as a sinner, as one in whom sin had reached its 
climax, as dead in trespasses and sins. He was himself a 
dreadful parable of death. He bore about him the emblems 
of death (Lev. xiii. 45); the rent garments, mourning for 
himself as one dead; the head bare, as was their wont who 
were defiled by communion with the dead (Hum. vi. 9; 
Ezek. xxiv. 17); and the lip covered (Ezek. xxiv. 17^). In 
the restoration, too, of a leper, precisely the same instru¬ 
ments of cleansing were in use, the cedar-wood, the hyssop, 
and scarlet, as were used for the cleansing of one defiled 
through a dead body, or aught pertaining to death; these 
same being never employed on any other occasion (cf. 
Hum. xix. 6, 13, 18 with Lev. xiv. 4-7). When David 
exclaims, ‘ Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean ’ 
(Ps. li. 7), he contemplates himself as a spiritual leper, as 
one who had sinned a sin unto death, who needs therefore 
through the blood of sprinkling to be restored to God from 
the very furthest degree of separation from Him. And 
leprosy being this sign and token of sin, and of sin reach¬ 
ing to and culminating in death, could not do otherwise 
than entail a total exclusion from the camp or city of God. 
God is not a God of the dead; He has no fellowship with 

^ Spencer calls him well, sepulcrum amhulans; and Cabin: Pro 
mortuis habiti sunt, quos lepra a sacro csetu abdicabat. And when 
through the Crusades leprosy had been introduced into Western Europe, 
it was usual to clothe the leper in a shroud and to say for him the masses 
for the dead. 


THE CLEANSING OF THE LEPER. 229 

death, for death is the correlative of sin; but only of the 
living. But the leper was as one dead, and as such was 
shut out of the camp ^ (Lev. xiii. 46; Num. v. 2-4) and the 
city (2 Kin. vii. 3), this law being so strictly enforced, 
that there was no exemption from it even for the sister of 
Moses herself (Kum. xii. 14, 15); and as little for kings 
(2 Chron. xxvi. 21; 2 Kin. xv. 5); men being by this exclu¬ 
sion taught that what here found place in a figure, should 
find place in very deed with every one found in the death 
of sin; he should be shut out from the true City of God. 
‘ There shall nowise enter into it anything that defileth, 
neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie * 
(Rev. xxi. 27). 

Nothing of all this, as need hardly be observed, in the 
least implied that the leper was a worse or guiltier man 
than his fellows. Being, indeed as it was, this symbol of 
sin, leprosy was often the punishment of sins committed 
against the divine government. Miriam, Gehazi, TJzziah® 
are all cases in point; and when Moses says to the people, 
^Take heed of the plague of leprosy ^ (Deut. xxiv. 8), this 
is no admonition diligently to observe the laws about le¬ 
prosy, but a warning lest any disobedience of theirs should 
provoke God to visit them with this plague.^ The Jews 
themselves called it ‘ the finger of God,’ and emphatically, 
‘ the stroke.’ It attacked, they said, first a man’s house; 
and then, if he refused to turn, his clothing; and lastly, 
should he persist in sin, himself: —a fine parable, let the 
fact have been as it might, of the manner in which God’s 
judgments, if a man refuse to listen to them, reach ever 
nearer to the centre of his life. So, too, they said that a 

^ Herodotus (i. 138) mentions the same law of exclusion as existing 
among the Persians, who accounted in like manner that leprosy was an 
especial visitation on account of especial sins. 

® The strange apociyphal tradition of Judas Iscariot perishing by the 
long misery of a leprosy, in its moat horrible form of elephantiasis, had 
this same origin (Gfrorer, Hie heUiye Sage, vol. i. p. 179). 

* See Rhenferd, p. io8s. 

* Molitor, Pkilosophie der Geschichte, vol. iii. p. 191. 


230 THE CLEANSINQ OF THE LETEE, 

man’s true repentance was tlie one condition of his leprosy 
leaving himd 

Seeing then that leprosy was this outward and visible 
sign of the innermost spiritual corruption, this sacrament 
of death, on no fitter shape of physical evil could the Lord 
of life show forth his power. He will thus prove Himself 
the conqueror of death in life, as elsewhere of death accom¬ 
plished ; and He therefore fitly urges his victory over this 
most terrible form of physical evil as a convincing testi¬ 
mony of his Messiahship : ‘ the lepers are cleansed ’ (Matt, 
xi. 5). Hor may we doubt that the terribleness of the 
infliction, the extreme suffering with which it was linked, 
the horror with which it must have filled the sufferer’s 
mind, as he marked its slow but inevitable progress, to be 
arrested by no human hand, the ghastly hideousness of its 
unnatural whiteness (Hum. xii. i o; Exod. iv. 6 ; 2 Kin. v. 
27), must all have combined to draw out his pity,^ in whom 
love went hand in hand with power, the Physician and 
Healer of the bodies as of the souls of men. 

We address ourselves now to the first of these acts of 
healing whereof the Gospels keep a record. ^Ayid behold 
there came a leper and worshipped Him,’ In this worship, 
as need hardly be said, there was an act of profound reve¬ 
rence. but not of necessity a recognition of a divine cha¬ 
racter in Him to whom such homage was offered. What 
this poor man would fain receive from the Lord he expresses 
in words remarkable as the utterance of a simple and 
humble faith, which is willing to abide the issue, whatever 
that may be ; and having declared its desire, to leave the 
granting or the withholding of it to a higher wisdom and 

1 Thus Jerome, following earlier Jewish expositors, explains ‘ smitten 
of God’ (Isai. liii. 4) as = leprosus; and out of that passage and the 
general belief in leprosy as a voaog dtfjXarocj upgrew the old Jewish tra¬ 
dition of the Messiah being a leper (aee Hengstenberg, Christologie, vol. L 
p. 382). 

^ Cf. Mark i. 41, 6 c^e 'hjtrovg (nrXayxvtoOdQ, 


THE CLEANSING OF THE LEPER. 


231 


love: ‘ Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst mahe me cleanP 
There is no questioning here of the power; nothing of his 
unbelief who said, ^ If Thou canst do anything, have com¬ 
passion on us and help us ’ (Mark ix. 22). ‘ And Jesus put 

forth his hand, and touched him,’ ^ ratifying and approving 
his utterance of faith, by granting his request in the very 
words wherein that request had been embodied: ‘ I will; 
he thou cleanA And immediately his leprosy was cleansed,’ 
This touching of the unclean by Christ is noteworthy, 
drawing after it, as according to the ordinances of the law 
it did, a ceremonial defilement. The Gnostics saw in this 
non-observance by the Lord of the ordinances of the Law 
a confirmation of their assertion that this had not proceeded 
from the good God, but from the evil.'^ TertuUian ansvrers 
them well.® He first shows what deeper meaning lay in 

^ Yet tbe Eoraanists in yain endeavour to draw from this passage an 
approval of the timor diffidentiae in our prayers which have relation to 
the things of eternal life, such as the forgiveness of sins, the gift of the 
Spirit. These we are to ask, assuredly believing that we have them. 
There is this diffidence in the leper’s request, because he is asking a tem¬ 
poral benefit, which must always be asked under conditions, and which 
may be refused, though to the faithful man the refusing is indeed a 
granting in a higher form (see Gerhard, Loce. Theoll. loc. 17, § 138). 

* TertuUian {Adv. Marc. iv. 35) : Quoniam ipse erat authenticus 
Pontifex Dei Patris, inspexit illos secundum Legis arcanum, signifi- 
cantis Christum esse verum disceptatorem et elimatorem humanarum 
macularum. 

® Bengel: Echo prompta ad fidem leprosi maturam. Ipsa leprosi 
oratio continebat verba responsionis optatse. 

* TertuUian (Adv. Marc. iv. 9) ; Ut semulus Legis tetigit leprosum, 
nihil faciens praeceptum legis, per contemptum inquinamenti. 

* Void. : Non pigebit .... figuratse legis vim ostendere; quae in 
exemplo leprosi non contingendi, immo ab omni comrnercio submovendi, 
communicationem prohibebat homihis delictis commaculati; cum quali- 
bus et apostolus cibum quoque vetat sumere ; participari enim stigmata 
delictorum, quasi ex contagions, si quis se cum peccatore miscuerit. 
Itaque Dominus volens altius intelligi Legem, per carnalia spiritalia 
significantem; et hoc nomine non destruens sed magis exstruens quam 
pertinentius volebat agnosci, tetigit leprosum, a quo etsi homo inquinari 
potuisset, Deus utique non inquinaretur, incontaminabilis scilicet. Ita 
non praescribetur illi quod debuerit legem observare, et non contingere 
immundum, quern contactus immundi non erat inquinaturus. He is less 
successful in his interpretation of the spiritual significance (Be Pud. 20), 
where he goes into more details in the matter. So Calvin (in loc.): Ea 


232 TEE CLEANSING OF THE LEPEB, 

the prohibition to touch the ceremoniallj unclean, namely, 
that we should not defile ourselves through partaking in 
other men’s sins; as St. Paul, transfiguring these ceremo¬ 
nial prohibitions into moral, exclaims, ‘ Come out from 
among them, and be je separate, and touch not the unclean 
things (2 Cor. vi. 17). These carnal prohibitions held good 
for all, till He came, the Pure to whom all things were 
pure ; who was at once incontaminate and incontaminable, 
in whom, first among men, the advancing tide of this 
world’s evil was effectually arrested and rolled back. 
Another would have defiled himself by touching the leper 
(Lev. xiii. 44-46); but He, Himself remaining undefiled, 
cleansed him whom He touched; for in Him health over¬ 
came sickness,—and purity, defilement,—and life, death.' 

‘ And Jesus saith unto him, See thou tell no man ’ (cf. Matt, 
xii. 16; Mark v. 43). St. Ambrose sees in this precept of 
silence an instruction of Christ to his people that, so far as 
may be, they withdraw from sight the good which they do; 
lest, he adds, they be themselves overtaken with a worse 
leprosy than any which they cure.^ But hardly so. If 
the prohibition did not find its motive in the inner moral 
condition of the man, its more probable reason was, lest 
his own stiller ministry should be hindered by the un¬ 
timely concourse of multitudes, drawn to Him in the hope 
of worldly benefits (which on this very occasion did occur. 


est in Christo puritas, quse omnes sordes et inquinamenta absorbeat, neque 
se contaminat leprosum tangendo, neque Legem transgreditur; and he 
beautifully finds in his stretching forth the hand and touching, a symbol 
of the Incarnation: Nec tamen qurdquam inde maculae contraxit, sed 
integer manens, sordes omnes nostras exhausit, et nos perfudit sua sancti- 
tate. H. de Sto. Victore: Lepram tetigit, et mundus permansit, quia 
Yeram humanitatis formam sumpsit, et culpam non contraxit. 

^ He touched the leper, says Theophylact, ShkvIq on ^ ayia avrov adp? 
ayiaaiiov fifreciSov. 

* Ejp. in Luc. V. 5 : Sed ne lepra transire possit in medicum, unus- 
quisque Dominicse humilitatis exemplo jactantiam vitet. Cur enim 
pr^cipitur nemini dicere, nisi ut doceret non vulganda nostra beneficia, 
Bedpremenda? So Chrysostom; ’Arvipov^ ijfxag TrapaaKtvd^ujv kuI aKtvo-^ 


THE CLEANSING OF THE LEPER. 


233 


Mark i. 45); or in the- expectation of seeing wonderful 
things;' or it might be, lest the violence of his enemies 
should he prematurely raised by the fame of his mighty 
deeds (John xi. 46, 47). But, as observed already, the in¬ 
junction to one that he should proclaim, to another that he 
should conceal, the great things which God had wrought for 
him, had far more probably a deeper motive, and grounded 
itself on the different moral conditions of the persons 
healed. Grotius and Bengel suggest very plansibly that 
this ‘ See thou tell no man ’ is to be taken with this limita¬ 
tion—‘ till thou hast fulfilled that which I enjoin thee, that 
is, to go thy way, show thyself to the priests, and offer the gift 
that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.^ Till this 
was accomplished, he should hold his peace; lest, if a ru¬ 
mour of these things went before him, the priests at Jeru¬ 
salem, out of envy, out of a desire to depreciate what the 
Lord had wrought, might deny that the man had ever 
been a leper, or else that he was now truly cleansed.* We 
may thus account for the notice of St. Mark, ^ He forthwith 
sent him away,^ or, put him forth; He would allow no 
lingering, but required him to hasten on his errand, lest a 
report of his cure should outrun him. ‘ For a testimony 
unto them,’ some understand, ^for a proof even to these 
gainsayers that I am come, not to destroy the law, but to 
fulfil it, not to dispel even a shadow, till I have brought in 
the substance in its room.^ These Levitical offerings I 

^ So Beza: Ne turba in solis miraculis obstupescens non satis ipsi 
spatii ad praecipuum illud sibi a Patre impositum munus obeundum, ad 
docendum videlicet, relinqueret. Compare Hammond on Matt. viii. 4. 

* Thus the Auct. Oper. Tmperf. (Hoyn. xxi.) : Ideo eum jubet otFerre 
munera, ut si postmodum vellent eum expellere, diceret eis: Munera 
quasi a mundato suscepistis, et quomodo me quasi leprosum expel- 
litis ? Si leprosus adhiic fui, munera accipere non debuistis quasi a 
mundato: si autem mundus factus sum, repellere non debetis quasi 
leprosum. 

3 So Tertullian {Adv. Marc. iv. 9) : Quantum enim ad glorise humanae 
aversionem pertinebat, vetuit eum divulgare, quantum autem ad tutelam 
Legis, jussit ordinem impleri. Bengel: Ut testimonium illis exhibeatur, 
de Messia praesente, Legi non deroganti. 


234 


THE CLEANSING OF THE LEPER. 


still allow and uphold, while as yet that better offering, to 
which they point, has not been made.’ ^ We should under¬ 
stand the words rather, ‘/or a testimony against them (cf. 
Mark vi. ii ; Luke ix. 5); for a witness against their un¬ 
belief, who refuse to give credence to Me, even while I 
legitimate my claims by such mighty works as these; works 
whose reality they have ratified themselves, accepting thy 
gift, re-admitting thee, as one truly cleansed, into the con¬ 
gregation’^ (John V. 36 ; xv. 24). Lor his presenting him¬ 
self before the priest had this object, that the priest might 
ascertain if indeed his leprosy was cleansed (Lev. xiv. 3), 
might in that case accept his gift,^ and offer it as an 
atonement for him; and then, when all this was duly ac¬ 
complished, pronounce him clean, and reinstate him in all 
his rights and privileges, ecclesiastical and civil, again.** 

^ Augustine {Quced. Evang. ii. qu. 3): Quia nondum esse coeperat 
sacrificium sanctum sanctorum, quod corpus ejus est. 

* Maldonatus; Ut inexcusabiles essent sacerdotes, si in ipsum non 
crederent, cujus miracula probassent. Witsius (^De Mirao. Jesu, i. p. 32) : 
Idcirco addidit Jesus base a se ita juberi f/c gapTvpwv ahroic^ ne deinceps 
ulla specie negari miraculum possit, et ut, dum eorum judicio approbatus, 
munus obtulisset, testimonium contra se haberent, impie se facere, quod 
Christo obluctarentur. 

* Awpov is used for a bloody offering by the LXX, as Gen. iv. 4; Lev. 
i. 2, 3, 10; cf. Heb. viii. 4, where the ^^pa—^wpa re Kal Ovaiui: of the 
verse preceding, therefore also of ver. i ; cf. Matt. v. 23. Tertullian 
(Adv. Marc. iv. 9) urges too much the notion of a ^ArtwAi-offering in this 
gift of the cleansed leper, which properly it was not, though the words 
are admirable, applied to such: Argumenta enim figurata utpote 
prophetatae Legis adhuc in suis imaginibus tuebantur, qua signific^bant 
hominem quondam peccatorem, verbo mox Dei emaculatum, offerre 
debere munus Deo apud templum, orationem scilicet et actionem 
gratiarum apud Ecclesiam, per Christum Jesum, catholicum Patris 
Sacerdotem. 

^ All the circumstances of the leper’s cleansing yielded themselves so 
aptly to the scheme of Church satisfactions, as it gradually shaped itself 
in the Middle Ages, that it is nothing wonderful that it was used at least 
as an illustration, often as an argument. Yet even then we find the great 
truth, of Christ the only Cleanser, often brought out as the most promi¬ 
nent. Thus by Gratian {De Pemit. dist. i.): Ut Dominus ostenderet 
quod non sacerdotali judicio, sed largitate divinse gratiee peccator 
emundatur, leprosum tangendo mundavit, et postea sacerdoti sacrificium 
ex lege offerre praecepit. Leprosus enim tangitur, cum respectu divinm 


THE CLEANSING OF THE LEPER. \ 235 

pietatis mens peccatoris illustrata compungitur.Leprosus semet- 

ipsum sacerdoti reprsesentat, dum peccatum suum sacerdoti poenitens 
confitetur. Sacrificium ex lege ofFert, dum satisfactionem Ecclesias 
judicio sibi impositam factis exsequitur. Sed antequam ad sacerdotem 
perveniat, emundatur, dum per contritionem cordis ante confessionem 
oris peccati venia indulgetur. Cf. Pet. Lombard (Sent. iv. dist. 18): 
Dominus leprosum sanitate prius per se restituit, deinde ad sacerdotes 

misit, quorum judicio ostenderetur mundatus.Quia etsi aliquis 

apud Deum sit solutus, non tamen in facie Ecclesise solutus babetur, nisi 
per judicium eacerdotis. In solvendis ergo culpis vel reiintniis ita 
operatur sacerdos evangelicus et judicat, sicut olim legalis in illis, qni 
contaminati erant lepra, quae peccatum signnt. 


11 



II. TUB HEALING OF THE CENTUIIION^S SERVANT, 
Matt. viii. 5-13 ’, Luke vii. i-io. 



IHEEE has been already occasion to denounce the error 


J- of confounding this healing with that of the noble¬ 
man’s son recorded by St. John (iv. 46). But while we 
may not seek forcibly to reduce to one two narratives which 
relate events entirely different, there is matter still in the 
records of this miracle on which the harmonist may exer¬ 
cise his skill. We possess two several accounts of it, 
independent of one another, the one by St. Matthew, the 
other by St. Luke. According to the first Evangelist, the 
centurion comes a petitioner in his own person for the 
boon which he desires; according to the third, he sends 
others as intercessors and mediators between himself and 
the Lord, as intercessors for him, with other differences 
which necessarily follow and flow out of this. Doubtless 
the latter is the more strictly literal account of the circum¬ 
stance, as it actually came to pass; St. Matthew, who is 
briefer, telling it as though the centurion did in his own 
person what, in fact, he did by the intervention of others— 
an exchange of persons of which aU historical narrative 
and all the language of our common life is full.^ A com¬ 
parison of Mark x. 35 with Matt. xx. 20 will furnish 
another example of the same, 

* Faustus tke ManicliEean uses these apparent divergences of the two 
narratives, with the greater fulness of one account than of the other, 
one saying that ^ many shall come from the east and west, and sit down with 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God^ which is omitted in 
the other, to cast a suspicion upon both. The calumniator of the Old 


THE CENTURIONS SERVANT. 


237 


^ And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came 
unto Him a centurion, beseeching Him, and saying. Lord, my 
servant lieth at home grievously tormented.'* This centurion, 
probably one of the Roman garrison of Capernaum, was 
by birth a heathen; but, like another of the same rank in 
the Acts (x. 1), like the eunuch under Candace (Acts viii. 
27), like Lydia (Acts xvi. 14), was one of many who were 
at this time deeply feeling the emptiness and falsehood of 
all the polytheistic religions, and who had attached them¬ 
selves by laxer or closer bonds, as proselytes of the gate, 
or proselytes of righteousness, to the congregation of Israel 
and the worship of Jehovah, finding in Judaism a satisfac- - 
tion of some of the deepest needs of their souls, and a 
promise of the satisfaction of allJ He was one among the 
many who are distinguished from the seed of Abraham, yet 
described as ‘ fearing God,’ or ^ worshipping God,’ of whom 
we read so often in the Acts (xiii. 43, 50; xvi. 14; xvii. 4, 

17 ; xviii. 7), the proselytes, whom the providence of God 
had so wonderfully prepared in all the great cities of the 
Greek and Roman world as a link of communication 

Covenant, he cannot endure to hear of the chiefs of that Covenant thus 
sitting down in the first places at the heavenly banquet. Augustine’s 
admirable reply contains much which is applicable still, on the unfair 
way in which gainsayers find or make discrepancies where indeed there 
are none,—as though one narrator telling some detail, contradicts another, 
who passes over that detail,—one ascribing to some person an act, 
contradicts another who states more particularly that he did it by the 
agency of another. All that we demand, he says, is, that men should be 
as fair to Scripture as to any other historic document; should suffer it to 
speak to men as they are wont to speak to one another {Con. Faust. 
xxxiii. 7, 8): Quid ergo, cum legimus, obliviscimur quemadmodum 
loqui soleamus ? An Scriptura Dei aliter nobiscum fuerat quam nostro 
more locutura ? Cf. De Cons. Evang. ii. 20. 

^ Remarkably enough all the Roman centurions who figure in the 
sacred narrative are honourably mentioned ; thus, besides these two, the 
centurion who watched by the cross of Christ, and exclaimed, ^ Truly 
this was the Son of God’ (Matt, xxvii. 54; Luke xxiii. 47); and Julius, 
who so courteously entreated Paul on his way to Rome (Acts xxvii. 3, 
43). Probably, in the general wreck of the moral institutions of the 
heathen world, the Roman army was one of the few m which some of 
the old virtues survived. 


238 


THE HEALING OF 


between Gentile and Jew, in contact with both,—holding 
to the first by their race, and to the last by their religion; 
and who must have greatly helped to the early spread of 
the faith and to the ultimate fusion of Gentile and Jew 
into one Christian Church. 

But with the higher matters which he had learned from 
his intercourse with the people of the covenant, he had 
learned this, that all heathens, all ^ sinners of the Gentiles,* 
were ‘ without; ’ that there was a middle wall of partition 
between them and the children of the stock of Abraham; 
that they were to worship only as in the outer court, and 
not presume to draw near to the holy place. And thus, 
as we learn from St. Luke (vii. 3), he did not himself ap¬ 
proach, but ‘ when he heard of Jesus, he sent unto Him the 
elders of the Jews, beseeching Him that He would come and 
heal his servant,^ a servant who ^ was dear unto him,^ * but 
now ^was side and ready to diej The Jewish elders exe¬ 
cuted their commission with fidelity and zeal, pleading for 
him as one whose affection for the chosen people, and 
active well-doing in their behalf, had merited this return 
of favour : ^ They besought Him instantly, saying that he was 
worthy for whom He should do this j for he loveth our nation, 
and he hath built us a synagogue. Then Jesus went with 
them,* 

But presently even this request seemed to the maker of 
it too bold. In his true and ever-deepening humility he 
counted it a presumption to have asked, though by the 
intervention of others, the presence under his roof of one 
so highly exalted. ‘ And when He was now not far from the 
house, the centurion sent friends to Him, saying. Lord, trouble 

* Calvin: Lucas Loc modo dubitationem praevenit, quae subire poterat 
lectomm animos : scimus enim, non babitos fuisse servos eo in pretio, ut 
de ipsorum vita tarn anxii essent domini, nisi qui singulari industria vel 
fide vel alia virtute sibi gratiam acquisierant. Significat ergo Lucas non 
vulgare fuisse sordidumque mancipium, sed fidelem et raris dotibus oma- 
tum servum qui eximia gratia apud dominum polleret; binctenta illius 
vitse cura et tarn studiosa commendatio. 


THE CENTURION'S SERVANT. 


m 


not Thyself: for I am not worthy that Thou shouldest enter 
under my roof.^ It was not merely that he, a heathen, 
might claim no near access to the King of Israel; but 
there was, no doubt, beneath this and mingling with this, 
a deep inward feeling of his own personal uuworthiness 
and unfitness for a close communion with a holy being, 
which was the motive of this message. And thus, in 
Augustine’s words, ‘ counting himself unworthy that Christ 
should enter into his doors, he was counted worthy that 
Christ should enter into his heart’*—a far better boon; for 
Christ sat down in the houses of many, as of that proud 
self-righteous Pharisee (Luke vii. 36; cf. xiv. i); whose 
hearts for all this were not the less empty of his presence. 
But this centurion received Him in his heart, whom he did 
not receive in his house.® And, indeed, every little trait 
of his character, as it comes forth in the sacred narrative, 
points him out as one in whom the seed of God’s word 
would find the ready and prepared soil of a good and hon¬ 
est heart. For, not to speak of those prime graces, faith 
and humility, which so eminently shone forth in him,— 
the affection which he had evidently won from those Jewish 
elders, the zeal which had stirred him to build a house for 
the worship of the true God, his earnest care and anxiety 
about a slave,—one so commonly excluded from all earnest 
human sympathies on the part of his master, that even a 
Cicero apologizes for feeling deeply the death of such 
a one in his household,—all these traits of character com¬ 
bine to present him to us as one of those ‘children of God’ 
scattered abroad in the world, whom the Son of God came 
that He might gather into the fellowship of his Church 
(John xi. 52). 

* Serm. Ixii. i: Dicendo se indignum prasstitit dignum, non in cujua 
parietes, sed in cujus cor Christus intraret. Neque hoc diceret cum tanta 
fide et humilitate, nisi ilium quern timebat intrare in domum suam, corde 
gestaret. Nam non erat magna felicitas si Dominus Jesus intraret in 
parietes ejus et non esset in pectore ejus (Luke vii. 36). 

* Augustine {Serm. Ixxvii. 8) : Tecto non recipiebat, corde receperat. 
Quanto humilior, tanto capacior, tanto plenior. Colies enim aquam 
repellunt, valles implentur. 


240 


THE HExiLING OF 


Tlie manner is very noteworthy in which the Roman 
officer, by help of an analogy drawn from the. circle of 
things with which he himself is most familiar, by a com¬ 
parison borrowed from his own military experience,* makes 
easier to himself this act of his faith. JEe knows that 
Christ’s wordy without his actual presence, will be sufficient; 
there is that in his own experience which assures him as 
much; for, he adds, ‘ I am a man under authority, having 
soldiers under me, and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth ; 
and to another. Come, and he cometh; and to my servant. Do 
this, and he doeth itJ^ It is an argument from the less to 
the greater. He contemplates the relation of Christ to the 
spiritual kingdom in an aspect as original as it is grand. 
The Lord appears to him as the true Csesar and Imperator, 
the highest over the military hierarchy, not of earth, 
but of heaven (Col. i. i6). ‘lam,’ he would say, ‘one 
occupying only a subordinate place, set under authority, 
a subaltern, with tribunes and commanders over me. Tet, 
notwithstanding, those that are under me, obey me; and 
my word is potent with them. I bid them go hither and 
thither, and they obey my bidding, so that, myself sitting 
stUl, I can yet accomplish the things which I desire (Acts 
X. 8 ; xxiii. 23). How much more Thou; not set, as I am, 
in a subordinate place, but who art as a Prince over the 
host of heaven,2 with Angels and Spirits to obey thy word 
and run swiftly at thy command, canst fulfil from a 

^ Bengel: Sapientia fidelis ex ruditate militari pulchre elucens. 

* The (Trpand ovpdviog (Luke ii. 13 ; cf. Rev. xix. 14). How true a 
notion this indeed was, which in his simple faith the centurion had con¬ 
ceived for himself, we see from those words of our Lord, ‘ Thinkest 
thou tliat I cannot now pray to my Father, and He shall presently give 
Me more than twelve legions of angels’ (Matt, xxvi 53)? Jerome (in 
loc.) : Volens ostendere Dominum quoque non per adventum tantum 
corporis, sed per angelorum ministeria posse implere quod vellet. Fuller 
(^Pisgah Sight of Palestine, vol. i. p. 109) takes it a little differently— 
* Concluding from his own authority over his soldiers, that Christ, ^y a 
more absolute power, as Lord High Marshal of all maladies, without his 
personal presence, could by his bare word of command order any disease 
to march or retreat at his pleasure.’ 


THE CENTURIOJTS SERVANT. 


241 

distance all tlie good pleasure of thy will. There is then 
no need that Thou shouldest come to my house; only 
commission one of these genii of healing, who will execute 
speedily the errand of grace on which Thou shalt send 

him.’ ^ 

In all this there was so wonderful a union of faith and 
humility, that it is nothing strange to read that the Lord 
Himself was filled with admiration: ‘ When Jesus heard it. 
He marvelled,^ and said to them that folloived, Verily, I say 

^ Severus (in Cramer, Catena) : El yap tydj (TTpaTidjrrjQ (Zv, icai virb 
i^ovalav (iaaiXeiog roTg dopv(p6poLQ IvrsXXopai, Trwg ou pdXXov 

avTog 6 Tu)v &uu) Knl dyyeXiicujv bvvdixiMV TroirjryQ, o OsXeig ipe7g Kal 

■ysvyaiTai) and Augustine (Enarr, in Ps. xlvi. 9, and Serm. Ixii. 2): Si 
ergo ego, inquit, homo sub potestate, jubendi habeo potestatem, quid tu 
possis, cui omnes serviunt potestates ? And Bernard more than once 
urges this as a singular feature of his humility; thus Ep. cccxcii.: 
O prudens et xero corde humilis anima! dicturus quod praelatus esset 
militibus, repressit extollentiam confessione subjectionis: immo prse- 
misit subjectionem, ut pluris sibi esset quod suberat, quam quod prae- 
erat 5 and beautifully, De Off. Episc. 8: I^on jactabat potestatem, 

quam nec solam protulit, nec priorem.Praemissa siquidem est 

humilitas, ne altitude praecipitet. Nec enim locun^ invenit arrogantia, 
ubi tarn clarum humilitatis insigne praecesserat. Such explanation ap¬ 
pears preferable to theirs who make dvftpojTrog vtto t^ovalav, a man 
in authority. Rettig {Theol. Stud. u. Krit. 1838 , p. 472), reading 
with Lachmann, dv9p. vtto e^ovfr. raarrSpfvog (which last word, however, 
should not have found place in the text), has an ingenious but untenable 
explanation in this sense. The Atcct. Oper. Imperf. interprets rightly 
dv^phivog vnb i^ovatav, a man in a subordinate position; but then will 
not allow, nay rather expressly denies, that this is a comparison by way 
of contrast, which the centurion is drawing,—that he is magnifying the 
Lord’s highest place by comparing it with his own only subordinate, 
but that rather he is in all things likening the one to the other: ^ As I am 
under worldly authorities, and yet have those whom I may send, so 
Thou, albeit under thine heavenly Father, hast yet a heavenly host at 
thy bidding.’ (Ego sum homo sub potestate alterius, tamen habeo po¬ 
testatem j ubendi eis qui sub me sunt. Nec enim impedior jubere minores, 
propter quod ipse sum sub majoribus; sed ab illis quidem jubeor, sub 
quibus sum; illis autem jubeo, qui sub me sunt: sic et tu, quamvis sub 
potestate Patris sis, secundum quod homo es, habes tamen potestatem 
jubendi angelis tuis, nec impediris jubere inferioribus, propter quod ipse 
habes superiorem.) This interpretation, though capable of a fair meaning, 
probably expresses the Arian tendencies of the author. 

* "But since all wonder properly so called, arises from the meeting with 
something unexpected and hitherto unknown, how could the Lord, to 
whom all things were known, be said to marvel To this some have 



242 


THE HEALING OF 


unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in IsraeV^ 
Where faith is, there will be the kingdom of God; so that 
this saying already contains a warning to his Jewish 
hearers, of the danger they are in of forfeiting blessings 
whereof others are showing themselves worthier than they,® 
But the words which follow are far more explicit: ‘ For I 
say unto you, that many shall come from the east and west, 
and shall sit down with Ahraham, and Isaac and Jacob, in the 
kingdom of heaven,^ shall be partakers of the heavenly 
festival, which shall be at the inauguration of the king¬ 
dom ; ‘ but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into 
outer darkness ; there shall be weeding and gnashing of teeth; ’ 
—in other words, the kingdom should be taken from them, 
‘ and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof ’ 
(Matt. xxi. 23); because of their unbelief, they, the natural 
branches of the olive tree, should be broken off, and in 
their room the wild olive should be grafPed in (Rom. xi. 
17-24; Acts xiii. 46; xix. 9; xxviii. 28; Matt. hi. 9). 

^ And Jesus said unto the centurion,^ or to him in his 
messengers, ^ Go thy way, and as thou hast believed,^ so be 

answered that Christ did not so much Himself wonder, as commend to 
us that which was worthy of our admiration. Thus Augustine {De Gm. 
Con. Man. i. 8) : Quod mirabatur Dominus, nobis mirandum esse signifi- 
cahat; and he asks in another place {Con. Adv. Leg. et Prcph. i. 7), how 
should not lie have known before the measure of that faith, which He 
Himself had created ? (An vero alius earn in corde centurionis opera- 
batur, quam ipse qui mirabatur?) Yet a solution like this brings an 
unreality into parts of our Lord’s conduct, as though He did some things 
for show and the effect which they would have on others, instead of all 
his actions being the truthful exponents of his own most inmost being. 
On the other hand, to say that according to his human nature He might 
have been ignorant of some things, seems to threaten a Nestorian seve¬ 
rance of the Person of Christ. But the whole subject of the communi- 
catio idiomatum, with its precipices on either side, is one of the hardest 
in the whole domain of theology. See Aquinas, Sum. Theol. 3* qu. 15, 
.art. 8 ; and Gerhard, Loco. Theoll. iv. 2, 4. 

^ Augustine: Tn oliva non inveni, quod inveni in oleastro. Ergo diva 
superbiens prsecidatur; oleaster humilis inseratur. Vide inserentem, vide 
prjecidentem. Cf. In Joh. tract, xvi. ad finem. 

* Augustine: Alienigenae came, domestic! corde. 

* Bernard {Serm. iii. De Animd): Oleum misericordiae in vase fiducia 
ponit. 


/ 


THE CENTURION'S SERVANT. 243 

it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the self¬ 
same hour; ’—not merely was tliere a remission of the 
strength, of the disease, but it left him altogether (John iv. 
52; Matt. viii. 15). There is a certain difficulty in de¬ 
fining the exact character of the complaint from which he 
was thus graciously delivered. St. Matthew describes it 
as ^ palsy ; ’ with which the ‘ grievously tormented ’ which 
immediately follows, seems not altogether to agree, nor 
yet the report in St. Luke, that he was ‘ ready to die ; ’ 
since palsy in itself neither brings with it violent parox¬ 
ysms of pain, nor is it in its nature mortal. But paralysis 
with contraction of the joints is accompanied with intense 
suffering, and, when united, as it much oftener is in the 
hot climates of the East and of Africa than among us, 
with tetanus, both ‘ grievously torments/ and rapidly brings 
on dissolution.^ 

^ At I Macc. ix. 55, 56, it is said of Alcimus, who was Uaken with a 
palsy,’ that he died presently * with great torment’ (jujrd (Saaavov fxtydXrjg 
=SeivMg (SaaavtZofievog here ; cf. Winer, Reahuorterbuch, s. v. Paralytische), 
In St. Matthew and St. Mark these paralytics are always TrapaXunicoi, 
in St. Luke’s Gospel, as in the Acts, irapaXtXvysvoi, 


1 *. THE DEMONIAC IN THE SYNAGOGFE OF 
CAPERNAUM. 


Mark i. 23-275 Luke iv. 33-36, 

T he healing of this demoniac, the second miracle of the 
kind which the Evangelists record at any length, may 
not offer so much remarkable as some similar works, but 
not the less has its own special points of interest. What 
distinguishes it the most, although finding parallels else¬ 
where (see Mark i. 34; Matt. viii. 29), is the testimony 
which the evil spirit bears to Christ, and his refusal to ac¬ 
cept it. This history thus stands in very instructive 
relation with another in the Acts (xvi. 16--18). There in 
like manner, a damsel possessed with a spirit of divination 
bears witness to Paul and his company, ‘ These men are 
the servants of the most high God, which show unto us 
the way of salvation; ’ and the servant there will, as little 
as the Master here, endure that hell should bear witness to 
heaven, the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, 
and commands with power the evil spirit to come out. 

Our Lord was teaching, as was his wont upon a Sabbath 
(cf. Luke iv. 16; Acts xiii. 14, 15), in the synagogue of 
Capernaum; and the people now, as on other occasions 
(see Matt. vii. 29), ‘were astonished at his doctrine, for his 
vjord was with power.’ But He was not mighty in word 
only, but also in work; and it was ordained by the provi¬ 
dence of his Heavenly Father, that the opportunity should 
here be offered Him for confirming his word with signs 
following. ‘ There was in their synagogue a man with an 
unclean spirit ; ’ or, as St. Luke describes it, ‘ with the spirit 


THE DEMONIAC AT CAPERNAUM, 


245 


of an unclean devil ; ’ but iiDt therefore excluded from the 
public worship of God any more than another in like con¬ 
dition, recorded at Luke xiii. 16; and this spirit felt at 
once the nearness of One who was stronger than all that 
kingdom whereunto he belonged; of One whose mission 
it was to destroy the works of the devil. And with the 
instinct and consciousness of this danger which so nearly 
threatened his usurped dominion, he cried out,—not the 
man himself, but the evil spirit,—‘ saying, Let us alone : ^ 
what have we to do with Thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth ? ^ art 
Thou come to destroy us ? ^ (cf. Matt. viii. 29 ; 2 Pet. ii. 4 ; 
Jude 6). ‘I Jcnow Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God.’ 
Earth has not recognized her king, disguised as He is like 
one of her own children; but heaven has borne witness to . 
Him (Luke ii. ii; iii. 22; Matt. hi. 17), and now hell 
must bear its witness too ; ‘ the devils believe and tremble.’ 
The unholy, which is resolved to be unholy still, under¬ 
stands well that its death knell has sounded, when ‘ the Holy 
One of God’ (compare Ps. xvi. 10, where this title first ap¬ 
pears), has come to make war against it. 

But what, it may be asked, could have been the motive 
to this testimony, thus borne? It is strange that the 
evil spirit should, without compulsion, proclaim to the 
world the presence in the midst of it of the Holy One of 
God, of Him who should thus bring all the unholy, on 
which he battened and by which he lived, to an end. 
Might we not rather expect that he should have denied, 
or sought to obscure, the glory of his person ? It cannot 
be replied that this was an unwilling confession to the 
truth, forcibly extorted by Christ’s superior power, seeing 

1 "Ea, not the imperative from eaw, but an interjection of terror, wrung 
out by the ^o( 3 £pd tKdoxr) KpifftojQ (Heb. x. 27),—unless indeed the inter¬ 
jection was originally this imperative. Our own lo (=look) has exactly 
such a history. 

» 'Sa^aprivoQ here, and Mark xiv. 67; xvi. 6. The word appears in the 
New Testament in two other forms, Na^ajoaToc (Matt. ii. 235 xxvi. 71; 
John xviii. 7), and Ncr^wpaTog (Mark x. 47, and often). 


246 


THE DEMONIAC IN THE 


that it displeased Him in whose favour it professed to bo 
borne, and this so much that He at once stopped the 
mouth of the utterer.* It remains then either, with 
Theophylact and Grotius, to understand this as the cry of 
abject and servile fear, that with fawning and flatteries 
would fain avert from itself the doom which with Christ’s 
presence in the world must evidently be near;—to com¬ 
pare, as Jerome does, this exclamation to that of the 
fugitive slave, dreaming of nothing but stripes and 
torments when he encounters unawares his well-known 
lord, and now seeking by any means to deprecate his 
anger —or else to regard this testimony as intended 
only to injure the estimation of Him in whose behalf it 
was rendered. There was hope that the truth itself might 
be brought into suspicion and discredit, thus receiving 
attestation from the spirit of 'lies : ^ and these confessions 
of Jesus as the Christ may have been meant to traverse 
and mar his work, even as we see Mark iii. 22 following 
hard on Mark iii. ii. The fact that Christ would not 
allow this testimony, that He ^rebuked him, saying. Hold 
thy peace, and come out of him,^^. goes some way to make 
this the preferable explanation. Observe it is not here as 
elsewhere ^The Lord rebuke thee* (Jude 9; cf. Acts xvi. 18), 

^ ^ihu) 9 t]ti, cf. Matt. xxii. 12; and for the word used in its literal sense, 
1 Cor. ix. 9. 

* Grotius: Vult Jesum hlanditiis demulcere, cui se certando imparera 
erat expertus. Jerome {Comm, in Matt, ix.): Velut si servi fugitivi 
post multum temporis dominum suum videant; nihil aliud nisi de ver- 
beribus deprecantur. 

3 Thus, with a slight difference, Tertullian {Adv. Marc. iv. 7): Incre- 
puit eum Jesus, plane ut invidiosum et in ipsa confessione petulantem et 
male adulantem, quasi haec esset summa gloria Christi, si ad perditionem 
dsemonum venisset, et non potius ad hominum salutem. 

^ Tertullian {Adv. Marc. iv. 8): Illius erat, prseconium immundi spiri- 
tus respuere, cui Sancti abundabant. Calvin: Duplex potest esse ratio, 
cur loqui non sineret: una generalis, quod nondum maturum plenae reve- 
lationis tempus adveneratj altera specialis, quod illos repudiabat praeconea 
ac testes suae divinitatis, qui laude sua nihil aliud quam maculam, et 
sinistram opinionem aspergere illi poterant. Atque haec posterior indubia 
est, quia testatum oportuit esse hostile dissidium, quod habebat seternjB 
ealutis et vitae auctor cum mortis'principe ejusque ministris. 


SYNAGOGUE AT CAPERNAUM. 


247 


but He rebukes in his own name and by his own 
authority. 

But can that word of his be affirmed to have been in 
this case the word of power, against which all reluctance 
was idle, that we might justly expect ? Christ has bidden 
the evil spirit to hold his peace, and yet in the next verse 
we learn that only after ‘ he had torn hirriy and cried with 
a loud voice, he came out of him ’ (cf. Acts viii. 7). But in 
truth he was obedient to this command of silence ; he did 
not speak any more, and that was what our Lord forbade : 
this loud cry. was nothing but an inarticulate utterance of 
rage and pain. Neither is there any contradiction between 
St. Luke, who says that the evil spirit ‘ hurt him not,^ and 
St. Mark, who describes him as having Horn him.’ He 
did not do him any permanent injury; what harm he 
could work, this no doubt he did. St. Luke himself 
reports that' he cast him on the ground; with which the 
phrase of the second Evangelist, that he threw him into 
strong convulsions, in fact consents. "We have at Mark 
ix. 26 (cf. Luke ix. 42) an analogous case, although there 
a paroxysm more violent still accompanies the going out 
of the foul spirit; for what the devil cannot keep as his 
own, he will, if he can, destroy; even as Pharaoh never 
treated the children of Israel so ill as then when they 
were just escaping from his grasp. Something similar is 
evermore finding place; and Satan tempts, plagues, and 
buffets none so fiercely as those who are in the act of 
being delivered from his tyranny for ever. 

St. Mark never misses an opportunity of recording the 
wonderful impression which Christ’s miracles made on the 
witnesses of them,—the astonishment, the amazement, 
with which these were filled (v. 20; vi. 51; vii. 375 26). 

He lays nowhere greater emphasis on this than here: 
* And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned 
among themselves, saying. What thing is this ? What new 
doctrine is this ? For with authority commandeth Ee even 
th& unclean spirits, and they do obey Him.’ 


13 . THE HEALING OF SIMON'S WIFE'S MOTHEE, 
Matt. viii. 14-17; Mark i. 29-31; Luke iv. 38-40. 

!HIS miracle is by St. Mark and St. Luke linked imme- 



-L diately, and in a manner that marks historic con¬ 
nexion, with that which has just come under our notice. 
Thus St. Mark: ‘ And forthwith when they were come out of 
the synagogue, they entered into the house of Simon and 
Andrew,^ In St. Luke it is only ‘Simon’s house his 
stronger personality causing Andrew, though probably 
with natural prerogatives, as an elder brother, and cer¬ 
tainly with spiritual, as the earlier called and the bringer 
of his brother to Jesus, here, as elsewhere, to fall into the 
background. It was probably to eat bread that the Lord 
on this Sabbath day entered into that house. ‘And 
when Jesus was come into Peter’s house. He saw his wife’s 
mother laid and sicTc of a fever ,’—‘ a great fever,’ as St. 
Luke informs us, who also mentions the intercession of 
some on her behalf; ‘they besought Him for her,’ We owe 
to him also the remarkable phrase, ‘ He rehuJced the fever,’ 
as on another occasion that ‘ He rehuJced the winds and the 
sea’ (Luke viii. 24). St. Matthew alone records that ^ He 
touched her hand’ (cf. Dan. x. 16; Rev. i. 17; Luke vii. 14; 

* Maldonatus is gi-eatly troubled that Peter, who before this had ^left 
all,’ should be supposed to have a house, militating, as this would do, 
against the perfection of his state. His explanation and that of most 
Eoman Catholic expositors is, that this house had hem Peter’s, but had 
been made over by him to his wife’s mother, when he determined to fol¬ 
low Christ in the absolute renunciation of all things. The explanation 
is needless; the renunciation was entire in will (see Matt. xix. 27), and 
ready in act to be cai’ried out into all its details, as the necessity arose. 


HEALING OF SIMON'S WIFE'S MOTHER, 249 


viii. 54). From that life-giving touch health and strength 
flowed into her wasted frame; ‘the fever left her,’ and left 
her not in that state of extreme weakness and exhaustion 
which fever usually leaves behind, when in the ordinary 
course of things it has abated; ^ not slowly convalescent; 
but cured so perfectly that ‘immediately she arose, and 
ministered unto them’ (cf. John iv. 52),—providing for 
those present what was necessary for their entertainment; 
—a pattern, it has been often observed, to all restored to 
spiritual health, that they should use this strength in 
ministering to Christ and to his people.^ 

The famh of this miracle, following close upon another 
wrought on the same day, spread so rapidly, that ‘ when 
the even was come,’ or ‘ when the sun did set,’ as St. Mark 
has it, ‘ they brought unto Him many that were possessed 
with devils; and He cast out the spirits with his word, and 
healed all that were sich’ There are two explanations of 
this little circumstance, by all three Evangelists carefully 
recorded, that not till the sun was setting or had actually 
set they brought their sick to Jesus. Hammond and 
Olshausen suggest, that they waited till the heat of the 
middle day, which these were ill able to bear, was past, 
and brought them in the cool of the evening. Others 
assume that this day being a Sabbath (cf. Mark i. 21, 29, 
32), they were unwilling to violate its sacred rest; which 
in their own esteem they would have done, bringing- out 
their sick before the close of that day, that is, before 
sunset. Thus Chrysostom, on one occasion,^ although on 

^ Jerome (Comm, in Matt, in loc.) observes this: Natura hominum 
istiusmodi est, ut post febrim magis lassescaut corpora, et incipiento 
sanitate segrotationis mala sentiant. Verum sanitas qum confertur a 
Domino totiim simul reddit, nec sufficit esse sanatam, sed nt iniTam^ 
fortitiidinis indicetur, additum est, Et surrexit et ministrabat eis. 

^ Gerhard (Harm. Evang. 38): Simul vero docemur, quando spirituali- 
ter sanati sumus, ut membra nostra prsebeamus arma justitim Dei [DeoPj 
et ipsi serviamus in justitia et sanctitate coram ipso, inservientes proximo, 
et membris Christi sicut haec muliercula Christo et discipulis ministrat. 

3 In Cramer, Catena^ vol. i. p. 278. 


250 


THE HEALING OF 


anotlier lie sees here more generally an evidence of the 
faith and eagerness of the people, who, even when the day 
was spent, still came streaming to Christ, and laying their 
sick before Him. 

All this found place, as St. Matthew tells ns, ^ that it 
might he fulfilled which was spoken hy Esaias the prophet, 
saying, Himself took our infirmities and hare our sicknesses! 
Hot a few have seized on this ‘ that it might he fulfilled ’ as 
a proof that St. Matthew did not see any reference in the 
passage which he cites from Isaiah (liii. 4) to the vicarious 
and atoning work of the Christ; and even allowing that 
there was there a prophecy of Him as a remover of the 
world’s woe, yet not as Himself coming under that woe 
that so He might remove it. Few will, I suppose, at this 
day deny that such a sense lies in the original words of 
Isaiah, that his ^ took ’ is not merely ^ removed,’ nor his 
‘ bare,’ ^ bare away; ’ ^ his image being rather that of one 
who, withdrawing a crushing burden from the shoulder of 
another, submits to it his own. But this interpretation of 
the words, so distinctly vindicated for them by St. Peter 
(i Pet. ii. 24), St. Matthew in no way denies. That 
‘ Himself^ with which he commences his citation, implying 
as it does a reaction in some shape or other of the cures 
wrought, upon Him who wrought them, is decisive upon 
this point; not to say that the two verbs which he uses ^ 
refuse to lend themselves to any other interpretation. 
Doubtless there is a difficulty, or difficulties rather, for 
there are two, about this citation—the first, why St. 
Matthew should bring it at all into connexion with the 
healing of the bodily diseases of men; and the second, 
how there should have been any more real fulfilment of it 
herein, than in every other part of the earthly ministry of 

* Tertullian indeed so quotes tlie words from his old Latin version 
{Adv. Marc. iii. 17); Ipse enim imbecillitates nostras abstulit, et lan- 
giiores portavit; but the Vulgate more correctly, Vere languores nostros 
ipse talit, et dolores nostros ipse portayit 

* "EXa/^f, i^aaTam. 


SIMON'S WIFIPS MOTHER. 


251 


Clirist. The first of these difficulties is easily disposed of. 
The connexion, above all as traced in Scripture, is so 
intimate between sin and suffering, death (and disease is 
death beginning) is so directly the consequence of sin, all 
the weight of woe which rests upon the world is in one 
sense so distinctly penal, that the Messiah might be 
regarded equally as in his proper work, as fulfilling the 
prophecies which went before concerning Him, whether 
He were removing the sin, or removing the sickness, 
sorrow, pain, which are the results of the sin, the disorder 
of our moral being or of our physical. 

The other question is one of a more real embarrassment. 
The words of St. Matthew, as of the prophet from whom 
he draws them, certainly imply, as we have seen, an 
assuming upon the part of the Lord of the sicknesses and 
infirmities from which He delivered others. But how 
could this be ? In what true sense could our Lord be said 
to bear the sicknesses, or Himself to take the infirmities, 
which He healed ? Did He not rather abolish, and remove 
them altogether ? It is, no doubt, a perfectly scriptural 
thought, that Christ is the KuOapfia, the (pap/iaKov, the 
piaculum, who shall draw to Himself and absorb all the 
evils of the world, in whom they shall all meet, that in 
Him they all may be done away; yet He did not become 
this through the healing of diseases, any more than through 
any other isolated acts of his earthly ministry. We can 
understand his being said in his death and passion to have 
come Himself under the burden of those sufferings and 
pains from which He released others; but how can this be 
affirmed of Him when engaged in works of beneficent 
activity ? Then He was rather chasing away diseases and 
pains altogether, than Himself undertaking them. 

An explanation has found favour with many, suggested 
by the fact that his labours this day did not end with the 
day, but reached far into the evening;—so that He removed, 
indeed, sicknesses from others, but with painfulness to 


252 


THE HEALING OF 


Himself, and with, tlie weariness attendant upon toila 
nnseasonablj drawn out; and thus may not unfitly be said 
to have taken those sicknesses on Himself.^ Olshausen 
adopts, though in somewhat more spiritual a manner, this 
explanation. The obscurity of the passage, he says, only 
disappears when we learn to think more really of the 
healing activity of Christ, as an actual outstreaming and 
outbreathing of the fulness of his inner life. As therefore 
physical exertion physically wearied Him (John iv. 6), so 
did spiritual activity long drawn out spiritually exhaust 
Him; and this exhaustion, as all other forms of suffering, 
He underwent for our sakes. The statement is questionable 
in doctrine : moreover, I cannot believe that the Evangelist 
meant to lay any such stress upon the unusual or prolonged 
labours of this day, or would not as freely have cited these 
words in relating any other cures which the Lord performed. 
Hot this day only, even had it been a day of especial 
weariness, but every day of his earthly life was a coming 
under, upon his part, those evils which He removed from 
others. Eor that which is the law of all true helping, 
namely, that the burden which you would lift, you must 
yourself stoop to and come under (Gal. vi. 2), the grief 
which you would console, you must yourself feel with,—a 
law which we witness to as often as we use the words 
‘ sympathy ’ and ‘ compassion,’—was truest of all in Him 
upon whom the help of all was laid.^ Hot in this single 

1 So Woltzogen, wbom, despite Lis Socinian tendencies, here Witsius 
{Meletem. Leidens. p. 402) quotes with approbation: Adeo ut locus hie 
prophetse his fuerit adimpletus j semel cum Christus corporis morhos 
ahstulit ah hominibus non sine summa molestia ac defatigatione, dum ad 
vesperam usque circa segrorum curationem occupatiis, quodammodo ipsas 
hominum segritudines in se recipiebat. . . . Altera vice, cum suis perpes- 
sionibus ac morte spiritualiter morbos nostrorum peccatorum a nobis sus- 
tulit. Of. Grotius, in loc. Theophylact had led the way to this explana¬ 
tion, finding an emphasis in the fact that the sick were brought to Jesus 
in the evening, out of season (jrapd Kaipot ), though he does not brino- that 
circumstance into connexion with these words of Isaiah. 

2 Hilary (in loc.); Passione corporis sui infirmitates humane imbe- 
cillitatis absorbens. Schoettgen (Hor. Heh. in loc.) has a remarkable 
quotation to the same efiect from the book Sohar. 


SniON'S WIFE^S MOTHER. 


253 


aspect of his life, namely, that He was a healer of sicknesses, 
were these words of the prophet fulfilled, but rather in the 
life itself, which brought Him in contact with the thousand 
forms of want and woe, of discord in man’s outward life, of 
discord in man’s inner heiug. Every one of these, as a 
real consequence of sin, and at every moment contemplated 
hy Him as such, pressed with a living pang into the holy 
soul of the Lord. St. Matthew quotes these words' in 
reference to one day of our Lord’s work upon earth; but 
we only enter into their full force when we recognize that, 
eminently true of that day,—and here we may fitly urge 
its long and exhausting toils,—^they were also true of all 
other days, and of all other aspects of that ministry which 
He came into the world to fulfil. He bore these sicknesses, 
inasmuch as He bore that mortal suffering life, in which 
alone He could bring them to an end, and finally swallow 
up death, and all that led to death, in victory. 


14 * 


THE RAISING OF THE WIDOW^S SON, 


Ltjke vii. 11-16. 


8 T. ltjke is tlie only Evangelist who tells us of more 
than one whom the Lord raised from the dead. St, 
Matthew and St. Mark tell us only of Jairus’ daughter; 
St. John only of Lazarus. St. Luke, recording the first 
of these miracles in common with the two earlier Evan¬ 
gelists, has this one which is peculiarly his own. ‘ And it 
came to fass the day after that He went into a city called 
NainJ* That healing of the centurion’s servant at a 
distance and with a word was no doubt a great miracle; 
but ‘ the day after ’ was to see a far mightier and more 
wonderful work even than this. Nain is not mentioned 
elsewhere in Scripture. It lay upon the southern border 
of Galilee, and on the road to Jerusalem, whither our Lord 
was probably now going to keep the second passover of his 
open ministry. Dean Stanley points out its exact position, 
and even the spot where this mighty work must have been 
wrought; ‘ On the northern slope of the rugged and 
barren ridge of Little Hermon, immediately west of Endor, 
which lies in a further recess of the same range, is the 
ruined village of Nain, Ko convent, no tradition marks 
the spot. But, under these circumstances, the name is 
sufiicient to guarantee its authenticity. One entrance 
alone it could have had—that which opens on the rough 
hill-side in its downward slope to the plain. It must have 
been in this steep descent, as, according to Eastern custom, 
they “ carried out the dead man,” that “ nigh to the gate ” 


THE RAISING OF THE WIDOW'S SON. 255 


of tlie village, the bier was stopped, and the long proces¬ 
sion of mourners stayed, and the young man delivered 
back ” to his mother.’ ^And many of his discijples went with 
Him, and much people. Now when He came nigh to the gate 
of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, 1 the 
only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and much people 
of the city was with her.^ It was thus ordained in the 
providence of God that the witnesses of this miracle should 
be many; the ^ much people^ that were with the Lor(i^. 
in addition to the ^ much people ’ which accompanied the 
funeral procession. The circumstance of his meeting this 
at ‘ the gate of the city,’ while it belonged to the wonder¬ 
works of God’s grace, being one of those coincidences which, 
seeming accidental, are yet deep laid in the councils of his 
grace, is at the same time a natural incident, and is ac¬ 
counted for by the fact that the Jews did not suffer to inter 
the dead among the living, but buried them without the 
walls of their cities. Even they who were touched with no 
such lively sense of human sorrows as was He who made 
all sorrows his own, might have been moved and doubtless 
were moved to compassion here. Indeed, it would be hard 
to render the picture of desolation more complete than in 
two strokes the Evangelist has done, whose whole narrative 
here, apart from its deeper interest, is a master-work for 
its perfect beauty.* The bitterness of the mourning for an 
only son had passed into a proverb; thus compare Jer. vi. 
26 : ‘Make thee mourning as for an only son, most bitter 
lamentation;’ Zech. xii. 10: ‘They shall mourn for Him 
as one moumeth for his only son; ’ and Amos viii. 10 : ‘I 
will make it as the mourning of an only son. ’ And as 

* ’R^EKOfii^iTo. The more technical word is iKpspuv, and the carrying 
out, fK<popd. 

* Gregory of Nyssa, himself a great master, hut in a more artificial 
and elaborate style, of narration, has called attention to this (De Horn. 
Opijic. C. 25): IIoAXa IC oXiyojv ^iriytlrai fj icrropia' GprjvoQ dvriKpvQ sari to 
dirjyrjpa* .... opag to (3dpog Ttjg (TVfil.opag, irZg iv oXiyip to ndQog 6 Xoyog 
f^eTpay(pSr](Te. 


256 


THE RAISING OF 


this mourning, so not less the desolation of a widow (Ruth 
i. 20, 21 ; I Tim. v. 5 ; Job xxiv. 3). 

^ And ivJien the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, 
and said unto her. Weep noV How different this ‘ Weep 
not,^ from the idle ‘Weep not,’ which so often proceeds 
from the lips of earthly comforters, who, even while they 
thus speak, give no reason why the mourner should cease 
from weeping. But He who came down from heaven, one 
day to make good that word, ‘ God shall wipe away all tears 
from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither 
sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain ’ 
(Rev. xxi. 4), shows now some effectual glimpses and 
presages of his power; wiping away, though as yet it 
may not be for ever, the tears from the weeping eyes of 
that desolate mother. At the same time, as Olshausen has 
observed, we must not suppose that compassion for the 
mother was the determining motive for this mighty 
spiritual act on the part of Christ: for then, had the joy 
of the mother been the only object which He intended, the 
young man who was raised would have been used merely 
as a means, which no man can ever be. The joy of the 
mother was indeed the nearest consequence of the act, but 
not the final cause;— that, though at present hidden, was, 
no doubt, the spiritual awakening of the young man for a 
higher life, through which alone the joy of the mother 
could become true and abiding. 

^And He came and touched the Her I The intimation was 
rightly interpreted by those for whom it was intended; 
‘ and they that hare him stood stilV Then follows the word 
of power: ‘ Young man, I say unto thee, Arise/ It is spoken, 
as in every instance in his own name,*—‘ I, who am the 
Prince of life, who have the keys of death and the 
grave, quickening the dead, and calling those things which 
are not, as though they were, bid thee to live. ’ And that 
word of his was potent in the kingdom of death; ‘ he that 
" ^ See back, p. 39 . 


THE WIDOWS SON. 


257 


was dead sat up, and began to spealc.* Christ raises from 
the bier as easily as another from the bed,^—putting a dif¬ 
ference here between Himself and his own messengers and 
ministers; for they, only with prayer and effort (i Kin. 
xvii. 20-22; cf. Acts ix. 40), or after a long and patient 
exercise of love (2 Kin. iv. 34), won back his prey from the 
jaws of death ; the absolute fulness of power dwelling not 
in them, who were but as servants in the house of 
another, and not as He, a Son in his own.® So, too, in 
heathen legend, she 

^ Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave/® 

» 

is only rescued by force and after a terrible conflict from 
the power of Death. 

^And he delivered him to his mother^ (cf. i Kin. xvii. 23; 
2 Kin. iv. 36). Faint prelude this of that which He has in 
store; for not otherwise shall He once, when his great 
^ Arise ’ shall have awakened not one, but all the dead, 
deliver as many as have fallen asleep in Him to their be¬ 
loved, for mutual recognition and for a special fellowship 
of joy. We have the promise and pledge of this in the 
three quickenings of the dead which prefigure that coming 
resurrection. ‘ And there came a fear on all ’ (cf. Mark i. 27; 
V. 15 ; Luke v. 9), ‘ and they glorified God^ (cf. Matt. ix. 8 ; 
Mark ii. 12), ^saying, That a great prophet is risen up among 

^ Augustine (^Serm. xcviii. 2): Nemo tarn facile excitat in lecto, quam 
facile Cbristus in sepulcro. 

* See what has been said already, p. 34. Massillon, in his sermon, 
Sur la Divinite de Jesus-Christ, has these eloquent words: Elie ressuscite 
des morts, il est vrai; mais il ost obligd de se coucher plusieurs fois sur 
le corps de I’enfant qu'il ressuscite: il souffle, il se retr^cit^ il s’agite : on 
voit bien qu’il invoque une puissance etrangere: qu’il rappelle de Tempi re 
de la mort une ame qui n’est pas soumise a sa voix: et qu’il n’est pas liii- 
meme le maitre de la mort et de la vie. Jesus-Christ ressuscite les 
morts comrae il fait les actions les plus communes: il parle en maitre a 
ceux qui dorment d’un sommeil dternei; et Ton sent bien qu’il est le 
Dieu des morts comme des vivans, jamais plus tranquille que lorsqu’il 
opere les plus grandes choses. * 

® See the Alcestis of Euripides, 849-861. 


258 THE RAISING OF THE WIDOWS SON. 


U 8 , and that God hath visited his ^eojple.’ This could be no 
ordinary prophet, they concluded rightly, since none but 
the very chiefest in the olden times, an Elijah or an Elisha, 
had revived the dead. They glorified God, that with the 
raising up of so great a prophet, the prophet that should 
come (Deut. xviii. 15; John i. 21, 46; iv. 25; vi. 14; 
Acts iii. 22 ; vii. 37), He,had brought the long and dreary 
period to a close, during which all prophecy had been silent. 
It was now more than four hundred years since the last of 
the Old Testament prophets had spoken, and the faithful 
in Israel may well have feared that there should now be 
no more op^n vision; that, instead of living voices and 
words with power from prophets in direct communica¬ 
tion with God, there should be henceforward nothing for 
them but the dead words of Eabbis and doctors of the law. 
We may a little understand their delight, when they found 
that God had still his ambassadors to men, that perhaps 
the greatest of all these ambassadors was actually among 
them.^ 

^ Philostratus {Vita Apollonii, iv. 45) ascribes a miracle to Apollo¬ 
nius, evidently framed in imitation and rivalry of this (on this rivalry 
see p. 67, and Baur, Apollonius und Christus, p. 40). Apollonius met 
one day in the streets of Borne a damsel carried out to burial, followed 
by her betrothed and by a weeping company. He bade them set down 
the bier, saying he would staunch their tears; and having inquired her 
name, whispered something in her ear, and then taking her by the hand, 
he raised her up, and she began straightway to speak, and returned to 
her father’s house. Yet Philostratus does not relate this as more, pro¬ 
bably, than an awakening from the deep swoon of an apparent death 
{dcpvTTviae Tr)v k6iji]v tov Sokovvtoq Gavarov), and suggests an explanation 
which reminds of the modem ones of Paulus and his school,—that 
Apollonius perceived in her a spark of life which had escaped the notice 
of physicians and attendants; but whether this, or that he did indeed 
kindle in her anew the extinguished spark of life, he owns it impossible 
for him, as it was for the bystanders, to say. 


5 . THE HEALING OF THE IMPOTENT MAN 
AT EE THESE A. 


Jonisr V. i-i6. 

1 1 E E ablest commentator of the Eoman Catholic Church 
begins his observations on this miracle with the 
utterance of his hearty wish that St. John had added one 
word, and told us at what ^ feast of the Jews ’ it was wrought;* 
seems indeed wellnigh inclined to fall out with him, that 
he has not so done. Certainly a vast amount of learned 
discussion would so have been spared; for this question 
has been much debated, and with an interest beyond that 
which intrinsically belongs to it; for it affects the whole 
chronology of St. John’s Gospel, and therefore of the 
ministry of our Lord; seeing that, if we cannot determine 
the duration of that ministry from the helps which this 
Gospel supplies, we shall seek in vain to do it from the 
others. If this ^feast of the Jews ’ was certainly a passover, 
then St. John will make mention of four passovers, three 
besides this present, namely, ii. 13 ; vi. 4; and the last; 
and we shall arrive at the three years and a half, the half 
of a ^ week of years,’ for the length of Christ’s ministry, 
which many, with appearance of reason, have thought 
they found designated beforehand for it in the prophe¬ 
cies of Daniel (ix. 27). But if this be a feast of Pentecost, 
or, as in later times has found acceptance with many, of 
Purim, then the half week of years which seems by 
prophecy to have been measured out for the duration of 

^ Maldonatus: Magna nos Joannes molestia contentioneque liberaaset, 
si vel uniim adjecisset verbum, quo quis ille Judseorum dies fuisset festus 
declarasset 
12 


2 t)0 


THE HEALJKG OF THE 


Messiah’s ministry, however likely in itself, will derive no 
confirmation from dates supplied by St. John; nor will it 
he possible to make out from him, with any certainty, a 
period of more than between two and three years from our 
Lord’s baptism to the time when, by a better sacrifice. He 
caused ^ the sacrifice and the oblation to cease,’ 

The oldest opinion which we have on this much- 
contested point is that of Irenseus. Replying to the 
Gnostics, who pressed the words of Isaiah, ‘ the acceptable 
year of the Lord,’ as literally restricting our Lord’s 
ministry to a single year, he enumerates the several pass- 
overs which He kept, and expressly includes this.^ Origen, 
however, and the Alexandrian doctors, who drew from 
Isaiah’s words the same conclusions which the Gnostics 
had drawn, did not, as consistently they could not, agree 
with Irenseus; nor did the Greek Church generally; 
Chrysostom, Cyril, Theophylact, understanding the feast 
here to be Pentecost. At a later period, however, 
Theodoret, wishing to confirm his interpretation of the 
half week in Daniel, refers to St. John in proof that the 
Lord’s ministry lasted for three years and a half,^ and 
thus implies that for him this feast was a passover. 
Luther, Calvin, and the Reformers generally were of this 
mind; and were the question only between it and Pente¬ 
cost, the point would have been settled long ago, as now 
on all sides the latter is given up. 

But in modern times another scheme has been started, 

-Kepler was its first author,—which has many and 
weighty suffrages in its favour; to wit, that we have 
here a feast of Purim; that, namely, which fell just before 
the second passover in our Lord’s ministry ,3 for second, and 

' Con. Hcer. ii. 22: Secunda vice ascendit in diem festum Paschse in 
Hierusalem, quando paralyticum qui juxta natatoriam jacebat xxxviii. 
annos curavit. 

^ Comm, in Ean.^ in loc. 

® Hug has done everything to make it plausible; and it numbers 
Tholuck, Olshausen, Wieseler (J^hronol. Synops. p. Z05. seq.), Ellicott 


IMPOTENT MAN AT BETHESDA. 


261 


not third, would in that case be the passover which St. 
John presently names (John vi. 4). I am not disposed to 
accept this newer disposition of the times and seasons of 
our Lord’s life. No doubt there is something perplexing 
in this passover being so soon followed by another; though, 
if we accept the supplementary character of St. John’s 
Gospel, and that it mainly records our Lord’s ministry in 
Judsea and Jerusalem, on which the other Evangelists had 
dwelt so little, this perplexity will disappear; above all, 
when the immediate result of this miracle was an im¬ 
possibility to tarry there (v. 16; vi. i). Our Translation 
speaks, not of ‘ the feast,^ but ‘ a feast, of the Jews,^ and it is 
certainly doubtful whether the article should stand in the 
Greek text or no; though Tischendorf has restored it in 
his last edition, and it is found in that oldest of all MSS., 
the Codex Sinaiticus. If it should have a place here, and 
‘ the feast’ be the proper rendering, this would be nearly 
decisive; for all other feasts so fall into the background 
for a Jew, as compared with the passover, that ‘ the feast,’ 
with no further addition or qualification, could hardly 
mean any other feast but this (John iv. 45 ; Matt, xxvii. 15). 
StiU the uncertainty of the reading wiUnot allow too great 
a weight to be placed on this argument. That, however, 
which mainly prevails with me is this—the Evangelist 
clearly connects, though not in as many words, yet by 
pregnant juxtaposition, the Lord’s going to Jerusalem 
with the keeping of this feast; for this He went up (cf. ii. 
13). But there was nothing in the feast of Purim to draw 
Him thither. That was no religious feast at all; but a 
popular; of human, not of divine, institution. No temple 
service pertained to it; but men kept it at their own 
houses. And though naturally it would have been cele- 

{On the Life of our Lcrrd, p- 135, seq.); Meander {Lchm Jesu, p. 430}, 
Jacobi {fheol. Stud. u. Krit. vol. xi. p. 861, seq.), and Liicke, tbongli 
this last somewhat doubtfully, among its adherents. Hengstenberg 
{Christologie, 2d ed. vol. iii. pp. 180-189) earnestly opposes it, and main¬ 
tains the earlier view; so too does Ewald. 


262 


THE HEALING OF THE 


brated at Jerusalem with, more pomp and circumstance 
than anywhere else, yet there was nothing in its feasting 
and its rioting, its intemperance and excess, which would 
have made our Lord particularly desirous to sanction it 
with his presence. As far as Mordecai and Esther and the 
deliverance wrought in their days stand below Moses, 
Aaron, and Miriam, and the glorious redemption from 
Egypt, so in true worth, in dignity, in religious signifi¬ 
cance, stood the feast of Parim below the feast of the 
passover; however a carnal generation may have been 
inclined to exaggerate the importance of that, in the past 
events and actual celebration of which there was so much 
to flatter the carnal mind. There is an extreme improba¬ 
bility in the suggestion that it was this which attracted 
our Lord to Jerusalem; and we shall do well, I think, to 
stand here upon the ancient ways, and to take this feast 
which our Lord adorned with his presence and signalized 
with this great miracle, as ‘ the feast,’ that feast which was 
the mother of all the rest, the passover. 

Now there is at Jerusalem hy the sheep-market a pool,^ 
which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda,"^ having five 
forchesl Eor many centuries the large excavation near 
the gate now called St. Stephen’s, has been pointed out as 

' 'Etti Ty TrpojSariK?] should he Completed, not, as in the E. V., with 
rtyop^, hut with TTvXy (aee Neh. iii. i; xii. 39 j LXX, ttvXt] TTpofSariKli), 
and translated, ‘ hy the sheeip-gate/ not ^ hy the sheeTp-markeV 
KoXvpjSliQpa (cf. John ix. 7)=:natatoria, piscina (so Eccles. ii. 6), from 
KoXvmSaojj to dive or swim, is used in ecclesiastical language alike for the 
building in which baptisms are performed (the baptistery), and the font 
containing the water (see Suicer, Thes. s. vv. fSaTrnaTrjpiou and KoXvp- 
(3!i9p(,). 

* = domus misericordice. Bengel and others find evidence 

here that this Gospel was written 5 e/ore the destruction of Jerusalem. 
Yet in truth this €^ri proves nothing. St. John might still have said, 
‘ There is at Jerusalem a pool,’ that having survived the destruction; or 
might have written with that vivid recollection, which caused him to 
speak of the past as existing yet. The various reading, yu for sori, is to 
be traced to transcribers, who being rightly persuaded that this Gospel 
was composed afier the destruction of the city, thought that St. John 
must have so written. 


IMPOTENT MAN AT BETHESDA, 


263 


the ancient Bethesda.^ It is true that its immense depth, 
Beventy-five feet, had perplexed many; yet the incurious 
ease ’ which has misnamed so much in the Holy Land and 
in Jerusalem, had remained without being seriously chal¬ 
lenged, until Eobinson, among the many traditions which 
he has disturbed, brought this also into question, affirming 
that ^ there is not the slightest evidence which can identify 
it with the Bethesda of the Hew Testament.’ ^ Nor does 
the tradition which identifies them ascend higher, as he 
can discover, than the thirteenth century. He sees in 
that excavation the remains of the ancient fosse, which 
protected on the north side the citadel Antonia; and the 
true Bethesda he thinks he finds, though on this he speaks 
with hesitation, in what now goes under the name of the 
Fountain of the Virgin, being the upper fountain of Siloam.* 

* So Ttotr, Palestina, p. 66. 

2 Biblical Researches, vol. i. p. 489, seq.; Later Researches, p. 249. 

3 He was himself witness of that remarkable phenomenon, so often 
mentioned of old, as hy Jerome {In Isai. viii.): Siloe .... qui non 
jugibus aquis, sed in certis horis diehusque ebulliat; et per terrarum 
concava et antra saxi durissimi cum magno sonitu veniathut which 
had of late fallen quite into discredit,—of the waters rapidly bubbling 
up, and rising with a gurgling sound in the basin of this fountain, and 
in a few minutes retreating again. When he was present they rose 
nearly or quite a foot {Researches, vol. i. pp. 506- 508. For other modern 
testimonies to the same fact see Hengstenberg, in he., who has gone 
carefully and fully into the matter). Prudentius, whom he does not 
quote, has anticipated the view that this Siloam is Bethesda, and that in 
this phenomenon is ‘ the troubling of the water,' however the healing virtue 
may have departed {Apotheosis, 680). 

Variis Siloa refundit 

Momentis latices, nec fluctum semper anhelat, 

Sed vice distincta largos lacus accipit haustus. 

Agmina languentum sitiunt spem fontis avari, 

Membrorum raaculas puro abluitura natatu j 
Certatim interea roranti pumice raucas 
Expectant scatebras, et sicco margine pendent. 

Perhaps it is not a slip of memory, with the confusion of this passage 
with John ix. 7, but his belief in the identity of Siloam and Bethesda, 
which makes Irenieus {Con. Hcer.iY. 8) say of our Lord: Et Silo& 
etiam ssepe sabbatis curavitj et propter hoc assidebant ei multi die 
gabbatorum. 


264 the healing OF THE 

^In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, 
halt, withered^ Our Yersion is slightly defective here. 
It leaves an impression that ^ impotent folk ’ is the genns, 
presently subdivided into the three species, ‘ blind, halt, 
withered ; ’ whereas, instead of three being thus subordi¬ 
nated to one, all four are coordinated with one another. 
We should read rather, ‘In these lay a great multitude of 
sick, blind, halt, withered f the enumeration by four, when 
meant to be exhaustive, being very frequent in Scripture 
(Ezek. xiv. 21; Eev. vi. 8; Matt. xv. 31). The words 
which complete this verse, ‘ waiting for the moving of the 
water,’' lie under a certain suspicion, as the verse foliowiug 
has undoubtedly no right to a place in the text. That 
fourth verse the most important Greek and Latin copies 
are alike without, and most of the early Yersions. In 
other MSS. which retain this verse, the obelus which 
hints suspicion, or the asterisk which marks rejection, is 
attached to it; while those in which it appears un¬ 
questioned belong mostly, as Griesbach shows, to a later 
recension of the text. And the undoubted spuriousness of 
this fourth verse has spread a certain amount of suspicion 
over the last clause of the verse preceding, which has 
not, however, the same amount of diplomatic evidence 
against it, nay, in some sort seems almost necessary to 
make the story intelligible. Doubtless whatever here is 
addition, whether only the fourth verse, or the last clause 
also of the third, found very early its way into the text; 
we have it as early as Tertullian,—the first witness for its 
presence.^ The baptismal Angel, a favourite thought with 
him, was here foreshown and typified; as somewhat later, 

1 De Bapt. 5: Angelum aqiiis intervenire, si novum videtur, exem- 
plum futurum praecucurrit. Piscinam Bethsaida angelus interveniens 
commovebat; observabant qui valetiidinem qiierebantur. Nam si quis 
praevenerat descender© illuc, queri post lavacrum desinebat. Figura 
ista medicinse corporalis spiritalem medicinam canebat, eS. forma qua 
semper carnalia in figura spiritalium antecedunt. Proficiente itaque 
hominibus gratia Dei plus aquis et angelo accessit: qui vitia corporis 


IMPOTENT MAN AT BETHESBA. 265 

Ambrose* a prophecy of the descent of the Holy 
Ghost, conjs^crating the waters of baptism to the mystical 
washins ^iway of sin; and Chrysostom makes freqnent nse 
of the '^^I’se in this sense.^ At first probably a marginal 
note, expi^essing the popular notion of the Jewish Christians 
concerning the origin of the heahng power which from 
time to time these waters possessed, by degrees it assumed 
the shape in which now we have it: for there are marks of 
growth about it, betraying themselves in a great variety 
of readings,—some copies omitting one part, and some 
another of the verse,—all which is generally the sign of a 
later addition: thus, little by little, it procured admission 
into the text, probably at Alexandria first, the birth-place 
of other similar additions. For the statement itself, there 
is nothing in it which need perplex or ofiend, or which 
might not have found place in St. John. It rests upon 
that religious view of the world, which in all nature sees 
something beyond and behind nature, which does not 
believe that it has discovered causes, when, in fact, it has 
only traced the sequence of phenomena; and which every¬ 
where recognizes a going forth of the immediate power of 
God, invisible agencies of his, whether personal or other¬ 
wise, accomplishing his will.'^ That Angels should be the 

remediabant, nunc spiritum medentur: qiii temporalem operabantur sa- 
lutem, nunc setemam reformant: qui unuin semel anno liberabant, nunc 
quotidie populos conservant. It will be observed that he calls it above, 
the pool Bethsaida ; this is not by accident, for it recurs (Adv. Jud. 13), 
in Augustine, and is still in the Vulgate. 

' Be Spir. Sanct. i. 7: Quid in hoc typo Angelus nisi descensio- 
nera Sancti Spiritus nuntiabat, quae nostris futura temporibus, aquas 
sacerdotalibus invocata precibus consecraret? and Be Myst. 4: Illis 
Angelus descendebat, tibi Spiritus Sanctus; illis creatura movebatur, 
tibi Chiistus operatur ipse Dominus creaturse. 

^ Thus In Joh. Horn, xxxvi.: ^As there it was not simply the 
nature of the waters which healed, for then they would have always 
done so, but when was added the energy of the Angel; so with us, it 
is not simply the water which works, but when it has received the grace 
of the Spirit, then it washes away all sins.^ 

* Hammond’s explanation of this phenomenon, which reads like a leaf 
borrowed from Dr. Paulus, and is strange as coming from him, early 
awoke earnest remonstrances on many sides,—thus see Witsius (Wolf, 


266 


THE HEALING OF ink 


ministers of liis will would be only according to the ana¬ 
logy of other Scripture (Heb. i. 7; Kev. vii. 2); while in 
‘the Angel of the waters^ (Rev. xvi. 5) we have a re¬ 
markable point of contact with the statement \-)f this 
verse. 

From among this suffering expectant multitude Christ 
singles out one on whom to display his power;—one only, 
for He came not now to be the healer of men’s bodies, 
save only as He could annex to this healing the truer 
healing of their souls and spirits. ‘ And a certain man was 
there which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.’ ^ Some 

Cw'cs, in loc.). The medicinal virtues of this pool were derived, he 
supposes, from the washing in it the carcases and entrails of the beasts 
slain for sacrifices. In proof that they were here washed, he quotes 
Brocardus, a monk of the thirteenth century! whose authority would be 
worth nothing, and whose words are these: Intrantibus porro Portam 
Gregis ad sinistram occurrit piscina probatica, in qua Nathinaei lavabant 
hostias quas tradebant sacerdotibus in templo offei'endas] that is, as is 
plain, washed their fleeces before delivering them to he oifered by the 
priests. Some in later times, knowing that the sacrifices were washed 
in the temple and not without it, amend the scheme here, suggesting that 
the blood and other animal matter was drained off by conduits into this 
pool. The pool possessed these healing powers only at intervals, because 
only at the great feasts, eminently at the passover, was there slain any 
such multitude of beasts as could tinge and warm those waters, con¬ 
stituting them a sort of animal bath for the time. The dyysXof is not an 
Angel, but a messenger or servant, sent down to stir the waters, that the 
grosser particles, in which the chief virtue resided, but which as heaviest 
would have sunk to the bottom, might reinfuse themselves in the waters. 
The fact that only one each time was healed he explains, that probably 
the pool was purposely of very limited dimensions, for the concentrating 
of its virtues, and thus would contain no more—its strength by evapora¬ 
tion or otherwise being exhausted before place could be made for another. 
He has here worked out at length a theory which Theophylact men¬ 
tions, but does not, as Hammond affirms, accept. These are his words: 
'Elxov ol TToWol vTToXrjipiVj on sat diro gSvov rov TrXvt'KrQai rd tproaOia 
Tojif Upt'iojv Supagiv rtrd Xap(5di>fi Oetorfpav to vdcop. Richter, De JBahieo 
Animaliy p. 107, quoted by Winer, Realicdrterhuch, s. v. Bethesda, 
favours this explanation: Non miror fontem tanta adhuc virtute animali 
hostiarum calentem, quippe in proxima loca tempestive effusum, iit pro 
pleniori partium miscela turbatum triplici maxiine infirmorum classi, 
quorum luculenter genus nervosum laborabat, profuisse 5 et quia animalis 
haec virtus cito cum calore aufugit, et vappam inertem, immo putrem 
relinquit, iis tantum qui primi ingressi sunt, salutem attulisse. 

^ These Hhirty and eight years, answering so exactly to the thirty-eight 


IMPOTENT MAN AT BETIIE^DA. 267 

understand this poor cripple—a paralytic probably (cf. 
ver. 8 with Mabk ii. 4; Acts ix. 33, 34)—to have actually 
waited at the bdge of that pool for all this time. Others re¬ 
gard these aJs the years of his life. Neither interpretation is 
correct. T]^e ^ thirty and eight ’ express the duration not 
of his life, but of his infirmity; yet without implying that 
he had waited for health from that pool during all that 
time; though the next verse informs us that he had there 
waited for it long. ‘ When Jesus saw him lie, and hneiu 
that he had been now a long time in that case, He saith 
unto him. Wilt thou he made whole ? ’ A superfluous ques¬ 
tion, it might seem; for who would not ‘ he made whole,’ if 
he might ? and his very presence at the place of healing 
attested his desire. But the question has its purpose. 
This poor man probably had waited so long, and so long 
waited in vain, that hope was dead or wellnigh dead 
within him, and the question is asked to awaken in him 
anew a yearning after the benefit, which the Saviour, pity¬ 
ing his hopeless case, was about to impart. His heart 
may have been as ‘ withered ’ as his limbs through his long 
sufferings and the long neglects of his fellow-men ; it was 
something to learn that this stranger pitied him, was 
interested in his case, would help him if He could. So 
learning to believe in his love, he was being prepared to 
believe also in his might. Our Lord assisted him now to 
the faith, which He was about presently to demand of him. 

The answer, ‘ Sir, I have no man, when the water is 
troubled, to put me into the pool,’ contains no direct reply, 
but an explanation why he had continued so long in his 
infirmity. The virtues of the water disappeared so fast, 
they were so pre-oceupied, whether from the narrowness 
of the spot, or from some cause which we know not, by 
the first comer, that he, himself helpless, and with no man 

years of Israel’s pimishment in the wilderness, liave not unnaturally led 
many, old and new (see Hengstenberg, Christol. vol. ii. p. 568), to find 
in this man a type of Israel after the flesh. 


268 , ‘ THE HEALING OF THE 

to aid, could never be tbis first, always therefore missed 
the blessing; ‘ while I am coming, another stego^eth down he^ 
fore me.’ ^The poor man still was prevented by some 
other,’ as Jeremy Taylor writes, showing us^ the word 
‘ prevent ’ in its actual transition from the old meaning to 
the new, and explaining to us the steps of this transition. 
But the long and weary years of baffled expectation are 
now to find an end : ^ Jesus saith unto him. Rise, take up thy 
hed, and walh,^ This taking up the bed shall serve as a 
testimony to all of the completeness of the cure (cf. Matt, 
ix. 6; Acts ix. 34). The man believed that word to be 
accompanied with pOwer; made proof, and found that it 
was so : ‘ immediately the man was made whole, and took up 
his hed, and walked. And on the same day was the Sahhath ’ 
—a significant addition, explaining all which follows. 

‘ The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured. It is the 
Sahhath ; it is not laivfulfor thee to carry thy hed.^ By ^the 
Jews ’ we understand here, as constantly in St. John, not 
the multitude, but the Sanhedrists, the spiritual heads of 
the nation (i. 19; vii. i ; ix. 22 ; xviii. 12, 14; cf. ver. 3; 
XX. 19). These,find fault with the man, for had not Moses 
said, ^ In it thou shalt not do any work’ (Exod. xx. 10), 
and still more to the point Jeremiah, ‘ Take heed to your¬ 
selves, and bear no burden on the Sabbath days ’ (xvii. 
21); so that they seemed to have words of Scripture to 
justify their interference and the offence which they took. 
But the man’s bearing of his bed was not a work by itself; 
it was merely the corollary, or indeed the concluding act, 
of his healing, that by which he should make proof him¬ 
self, and give testimony to others, of its reality. It was 
lawful to heal on the Sabbath day; it was lawful then to 
do whatever was immediately involved in, and directly 
followed on, the healing. And here lay ultimately the true 
controversy between Christ and his adversaries, namely, 
whether it was more lawful to do good on that day, or 
to leave it undone (Luke vi. 9). Starting from the unlaw- 


IMPOTENT MAN AT BETHESDA. 


269 


fulness of leaving good undone, He asserted that He was 
its true keeper, keeping it as God kept it, with the highest 
beneficent activity, which in his Father’s case, as in his 
own, was identical with deepest rest,—and not, as they 
accused Him of being, its breaker. It was because He 
had Mimself ^diOriQ those things’ (see ver. 16), that the 
Jews persecuted Him, and not for bidding the man to bear 
his bed, which was a mere accident involved in his own 
preceding act.' This, however, first attracted their notice. 
Already the pharisaical Jews, starting from passages such 
as Exod. xxiii. 12; xxxi. 13-17; xxxv. 2, 3; Hum. xv. 
32-36; Hehem. xiii. 15-22, had laid down such a multi¬ 
tude of prohibitions, and drawn so infinite a number of 
hair-splitting distinctions (as we shall have occasion to 
see, Luke xiii. 15, 16), that a plain and unlearned man 
could hardly know what was forbidden, and what was 
permitted. This poor man did not concern himself with 
these subtle casuistries of theirs. It was enough for him 
that One with power to make him whole. One who had 
shown compassion to him, bade him to do what he was 
doing : ^ He answered them, He that made me whole, the same 
said unto me, Tahe ujp thy bed, and walk ’ ^-^surely the very 
model of an answer, when the world finds fault and is 
scandalized with what a Christian is doing, contrary to 
its traditions, and to the rules which it has laid down ! 

After this greater offender they inquire now, as being 
the juster object of censure and of punishment: ‘ Then 
asked they him. What man is that which said unto thee, Take 
UJP thy bed, and walk ? ’ The malignity of the questioners 
reveals itself in the very shape which their question as¬ 
sumes. They do not take up the poor man’s words on 
their more favourable side, which would also have been the 

^ Calvin: Non suum modo factum exciisat, sed ejus etiam qui grabba- 
tum suum tulit. Erat enim appendix et quasi pars miraculi, quia nihil 
quam ejus approbatio erat. 

2 Augustine {InEv.Joh, tract, xvii.): Non acciperem jussionem a quo 
receperam sanitatem ? 


270 


THE HEALING OF THE 


more natural; nor ask, ‘ Wkat man is that wliick made 
thee whole ? ^ But, probably, themselves knowing perfectly 
well, or at least guessing, who his Healer was, they insi¬ 
nuate by the form of their question that He could not be 
from God, who gave a command which they, the interpre¬ 
ters of God’s law, esteemed so grievous an outrage against 
it.^ So will they weaken and undermine any influence 
which Christ may have obtained over this simple man—an 
influence already manifest in his finding the Lord’s autho¬ 
rity sufficient to justify him in the transgression of their 
commandment. 

But the man could not point out his benefactor; ‘ he that 
was healed wist not who it was ; for Jesus had conveyed Him¬ 
self away,^ a multitude being in that place ’—not, as Grotius 
will have it, to avoid ostentation and the applauses of the 
people ; but this mention of the multitude shall explain the 
facility with which He withdrew : He mingled with and 
passed through the crowd, and so was lost from sight in 
an instant. Were it not that the common people usually 
were on his side on occasions like the present, one might 
imagine that a menacing crowd under the influence of 
these chiefs of the Jews had gathered together, while this 
conversation was going forward betwixt them and the 
healed cripple, from whose violence the Lord, for his hour 
was not yet come, withdrew Himself awhile. 


1 Grotius: En malitife ingenium! non dicunt, Quis est qui te sanavit ? 
sed, Quis jussit grabatum tollere? Quasrunt non quod mirentur, sed 
quod calumnientur. 

^ ’E^fcvfw.-Tfr, The word does not occur again in the New Testament 
but four times in the Septuagint (Judg. iv. i8 ; xviii, 26; 2 Kin. ii. 24* 
xxiii. 16; cf. Plutarch, He Gen. Soc. 4). The connexion with vku,, 
to swim, is too remote to justify Beza in urging this image here, as he does: 
Proprie dicitur de iis qui ex undis enatant, fortassis quod qui clam nititur 
ex turba elabi, corpus non aliter summittat, quam qui ex undis emero-at. 
It 18 simply, glided out, evasit (not evaserat, ‘had conveyed himself 
away-), declinavit (Vulg.), with a connotation originally in the word of 
that sideward movement which one who desires to make his way rapidly 
through a crowd, and therefore to find the least possible resistance will 
often employ. ’ 


IMPOTENT MAN AT BETHESDA. 


271 


^Aftei^wards Jestis jindetJi him in the temple’ (cf. ix. 35). 
We may accept it as a token for good that Jesns found 
him there rather than in any other place; returning 
thanks, as we may well believe, for the signal mercies so 
lately vouchsafed to him (cf. Isai. xxxviii. 22; Acts iii. 8 ; 
Luke xvii. 15). And He, who sought ever to connect with 
the healing of the body the better healing of the soul, 
suffers not this matter to conclude thus; but by a word of 
solemn warning, declares to the sufferer that all his past 
life lay open and manifest before Him; interprets to him 
the past judgment, bids him not provoke future and more 
terrible : ‘ Behold, thou art made whole : sin no more, lest a 
worse thing come unto thee ’ —words which give us an awful 
glimpse of the severity of God’s judgments even in this 
present time; for we must not restrict, as some have done, 
this ^worse thing’ to judgment in hell ;—^ a worse thing’ 
even in this life might befall him than those eight and 
thirty years of infirmity and pain. His sickness had found 
him a youth, and left him an old man ; it had withered up 
aU his manhood, and yet ^ a worse thing ’ even than this 
is threatened him, should he sin again.^ Let no man, 
however miserable, count that he has exhausted the power 
of God’s wrath. The arrows that have pierced him may 
have been keen; but there are keener yet, if only he pro¬ 
voke them, in the quiver from which these were drawn. 

What the past sin of this sufferer had been we do not 
know, but the man himself knew very well; his conscience 
was the interpreter of the warning. This much, however, 
is plain to us ; that Christ did connect the man’s suffering 
with his own particular sin; for, however He rebuked 
elsewhere men’s uncharitable way of tracing such a con- 

1 Calvin: Si nitil ferulis proficiat erga nos Dens, quibus leniter nos 
tanquam teneros ac delicatos filios humanissimus pater castigat, noyam 
personam et quasi alienam induere cogitur. Flagella ergo ad domandum 
nostram ferociam accipit. Quare non mirum est si atrocioribus poenis 
quasi malleis conterat Deus, quibus mediocris poena nihil prodest: frangi 
enim sequum est, qui corrigi non sustinent. 


272 


THE HEALING OF THE 


nexion, and that unrighteous TJieodicee, which should 
in every case affirm a man’s personal suffering to be in 
proportion to his personal guilt (Luke xiii. 2, 3 ; John ix. 
3); yet He never meant thereby to deny that if much of 
judgment is deferred, much also is even now proceeding. 
However unwilling we may be to receive this, bringing as 
it does God so near, and making retribution so real and 
so prompt a thing, yet is it true notwithstanding. As 
some eagle, pierced with a shaft feathered from its own 
wing, so many a sufferer, even in this present time, sees 
and is compelled to acknowledge that his own sin fledged 
the arrow, which has pierced him and brought him down. 
And lest he should miss the connexion, oftentimes he is 
punished, it may be is himself sinned against by his 
feUow-man, in the very kind wherein he himself has 
sinned against others (Judg. i. 6, 7 ; Gen. xlii. 21; Jer. 
li. 49; Eev. xvi. 6). The deceiver is deceived, as was 
Jacob (Gen. xxvii. 19, 24; xxix. 23 ; xxxi. 7 ; xxxvii. 32); 
the violator of the sanctities of family life is himself 
wounded and outraged in his tenderest and dearest re¬ 
lations, as was David (2 Sam. xi. 4; xiii. 14; xvi. 22). 
And many a sinner, who cannot thus read his own doom, 
for it is a final and a fatal one, yet declares in that doom 
to others that there is indeed a coming back upon men of 
their sins. The grandson of Ahab is himself treacherously 
slain in the portion of Naboth the Jezreelite (2 Kin. ix. 23); 
William Eufus perishes, himself the third of his family 
who does so, in the New Forest, the scene of the sacrilege 
and the crimes of his race.^ 

‘ The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, 
which had made him whole,^ Whom he did not recognize 

' Tragedy in its highest form continually occupies itself with this 
truth—nowhere, perhaps, so grandly as in the awful r«produc(ion in the 
ChoephorcB of the scene in the Agamemnon in which Clytemnestra stood 
over the prostrate bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra—a reproduction 
with only the difference that now it is she and her paramour who are the 
slain, and her own son who stands over her. 


IMPOTENT MAN AT BETHESDA. 


273 


in tlie crowd, lie has recognized in the temple. This is 
Augustine’s remark, who hereupon finds occasion to com-, 
mend that inner calm and solitude of spirit in which alone 
we shall recognize the Lord.' Yet while such remarks 
have their own worth, they are scarcely applicable here. 
The man probably learned from the bystanders the name 
of his deliverer, and went and told it,—assuredly not, as 
some assume, in treachery, or to augment the envy already 
existing against Him,—but gratefully proclaiming aloud 
and to the rulers of his nation the physician who had 
healed him.^ He may have counted, in the simplicity of 
his heart, that the name of Him, whose reputation, though 
not his person, he had already known, whom so many 
counted as a prophet, or even as the Messiah Himself, would 
be sufficient to stop the mouths of the gainsayers. Had 
he wrought in a baser spirit, he would not, as Chrysostom 
ingeniously observes, have gone and told them ‘ that it was 
Jesus, which had made him whole,’ but rather that it was 
Jesus, who had bidden him to carry his bed. Moreover, 
we may be quite sure that the Lord, who knew what was 
in man, would not have wasted his benefits on so mean and 
thankless a wretch as this man would have thus shown 
himself to be. 

His word did not allay their displeasure, only provoked 
it the more. ‘ And therefore did the Jews 'persecute Jesus, 
and sought to slay Him, because He had done these thmgs on 
the Sabbath day’ Christ had in their eyes wilfully vio¬ 
lated the Sabbath, and the penalty of this wilful violation 
was death (Num. xv. 32-36). But there was no such vio¬ 
lation here; and He, returning good for evil, wiU fain raise 
them to the true point of view from which to contemplate 

' In Ev. Joh. tract, xvii.: Difficile est in turba videro Christum. 
Turba strepitum habetj visio ista secretum desiderat. In turba non 
eum vidit, in templo vidit. 

* Calvin: Nihil minus in animo habuit quam conflare Christo 
invidiam; nihil enim minus speravit quam ut tantopere furerent ad versus 
Christum. Pius ergo affectiis fuit, quum vellet justo ac debito honors 
medicum suum prosequi. 


274 


THE HEALING OF THE 


the Sabbath, and his own relation to it as the Only-begotten 
of the Father. He is no more a breaker of the Sabbath 
than his Father is, when He npholds with an energy that 
knows no pause the work of his creation from hour to 
hour and from moment to moment: ^ My Father worJceth 
hitherto, and I worTc ; ’ Christ’s work is but the reflex of 
his Father’s work. Abstinence from an outward work is 
not essential to the observance of a Sabbath; it is only 
more or less the necessary condition of this for beings so 
framed and constituted as ever to be in danger of losing 
the true collection and rest of the spirit in the multiplicity 
of earthly toil and business. Man indeed must cease from 
his work, if a higher work is to find place in him. He 
scatters himself in his work, and therefore must collect 
himself anew, and have seasons for so doing. But with 
Him who is one with the Father it is otherwise. In Him 
the deepest rest is not excluded by the highest activity; 
nay rather, in God, in the Son as in the Father, they are 
one and the same.^ 

But so to defend what He has done only exasperates his 
adversaries the more. They have here not a Sabbath- 
breaker merely, but a blasphemer as well; for, however 
others in later times may have interpreted his words, they 
who first heard them interpreted them correctly; ^ that 
the Lord was here putting Himself on an equality with 
God, claiming divine attributes for Himself: ‘ Therefore 
the Jews sought the more to hill Him, because He had not 
only hrohen the 8 ahbath, but said also that God was his 

1 Thus Augustine on the eternal Sahbath-keeping of the faithful 
(Ep. Iv. 9): Inest autem in ilia requie non desidiosa segnitia, sed 
quasdam ineffabilis tranquillitas actionis otiosse. Sic enini ab hujus 
vitae operibus in fine requiescitur, ut in alterius vitae actione gaudeatur. 
Cf. Philo, Ley. Alley, i. § 3, a grand passage, commencing thus : Uaitrai 

yap ovdsTTore Troiiov 6 Osbg, dX\* axnrtp iSiov ro Kaieiv Trvpoc, Kai xiSvog to 
ovru) Kai OfoD ro ttouiv' kuI ttoXv ys fidXXor, oatp Kai roig dXXoig 
airamv dpxv tov bpav eaTiv. 

‘ » Augustine ^In Ev. Jdi. tract, xvii.) : Ecce intelligunt Judsei, quod 
non intelligunt Ariani. 


IMPOTENT MAN AT BETHESDA. 


275 


Fathery making Himself equal with God^ (Ley. xxiv. 165 
John viii. 58, 59; xix. 7). Strange, if the Unitarian 
scheme of doctrine is true, that He should have suffered 
them to continue in their error, that He should not at 
once have taken this stumbling-block out of their way, 
and explained to them that indeed He meant nothing so 
dreadful as they supposed ! But so far from this. He only 
reasserts what has offended them so deeply, in a discourse 
than which there is none more important in Holy Scripture 
for the fast fixing of the doctrine concerning the relations of 
the Father and the Son. Other passages may contain as im¬ 
portant witness against the Arian, other against the Sabel- 
lian, departure from the truth; but this upon both sides 
plants the pillars of the faith. It would lead, however, too 
far from the purpose of this volume to enter on it here. 

I conclude with a brief reference to a matter in part 
anticipated already, namely, the types and prophetic 
symbols which have been often traced in this history. 
Many, as has been already noticed, found in these healing 
influences of the pool of Bethesda a foreshowing of future 
benefits, above all, of the benefit of baptism ; and, through 
familiarity with a miracle of a lower order, a helping of 
men’s faith to a receiving of the mystery of a yet higher 
healing which should be linked with water.* They were 
well pleased also to magnify the largeness and freedom of 
the later grace, by comparing it with the narrower and 
more stinted blessings of the former dispensation The 
pool with its one healed, and that one at distant intervals, 
—once a year Theophylact and most others assumed, 

1 So especially Chrysostom (in loc.). 

2 Tertullian (Ado. Jud. 13) adduces as one of the signs that even these 
scanty blessings did with the Jewish rejection of Christ cease altogether, 
that from that day forth, this pool forfeited its healing powers: Lex et 
Prophetae usque ad Joannem fuerunt; et piscina Bethsaida usque ad 
adventum Christi, curando invaletudineo ah Israel, desiit a beneficiis 
deinde cum ex perseverantia furoris sui nomen Domini per ipsos blasphe- 
maretur. 


1/6 


THE HEALING OF THE 


althougL. notliing of the kind is said, and the word of the 
original maj mean offcener or seldomer,—was the type of 
the weaker and more restrained graces of the Old Cove¬ 
nant; when not as yet was there room for all, nor a 
fountain opened, and at all times accessible, for the heal¬ 
ing of the spiritual sicknesses of the whole race of men, 
but only of a single people.^ 

Thus Chrysostom, in a magnificent Easter sermon ^ (it 
will be remembered that at that season multitudes of neo¬ 
phytes were baptized): ‘Among the Jews also there was 
of old a pool of water. Yet learn whereunto it availed, 
that thou mayest accurately measure the Jewish poverty 
and our riches. There went down, it is said, an Angel 
and moved the waters, and who first descended into them 
after the moving, obtained a cure. The Lord of Angels 
went down into the stream of Jordan, and sanctifying the 
nature of water, healed the whole world. So that there, 
indeed, he who descended after the first was not healed; 
for to the Jews, infirm and carnal, this grace was given : 
but here after the first a second descends, after the second 
a third and a fourth; and were it a thousand, didst thou 
cast the whole world into these spiritual fountains, the 
grace would not be worn out, the gift expended, the foun¬ 
tains defiled, the liberality exhausted.’ And Augustine, 
ever on the watch to bring out his great truth that the 
Law was for the revealing of sin, and could not effect its 
removal, for making men to know their sickness, not for 
the healing of that sickness, to drag them out of the 
lurking-places of an imagined righteousness, not to pro¬ 
vide them of itself with any surer refuge, finds a type, or 
at least an apt illustration of this, in those ‘Jive porches," 
which showed their sick, but could not cure them; in which 

1 The author of the work attributed to Ambrose (De Sacram. ii. 2) ; 
Tunc inquam temporis in figura qui prior descendisset, solus curabatur. 
Quanto major est gratia Ecclesise, in qua omnes salvantur, quicunque 
descendant! 

* 0 pp. vol. iii. p. 756, Bened. ed. 


IMPOTENT MAN AT BETHESDA. 


277 


they ‘ lay, a great multitude of impotent folk, blind, halt, 
withered^ It needed that the waters should he stirred, 
before any power went forth for their cure. This motion 
of the pool was the perturbation of the Jewish people at 
the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then powers were 
stirring for their healing; and he who ‘went down/ he 
who humbly believed in his Incarnation, in his descent 
as a man amongst us, who was not ofieiided at his 
lowly estate, was healed of whatsoever disease he had.^ 

^ Enarr. i. m Ps. \xx. 1 5 : Merito lex per Moysen data est, gratia et 
Veritas per Jesum Christum facta est. Moyses quiuque libros scripsit; 
Bed in quinque porticibiis piscinara cingentibus languid! jacebant, sed 
curari non poterant. . . . lUis enim quinque porticibus, in tigura quin- 
qiie librorum, prodebantur potius quam sanabantur segroti. . . . Venit 
l)ominus, turbata est aqua, et crucifixus est, descendat ut sanetur segrotus. 
Quid est, descendat ? Humiliet se. Ergo quicumque araatis litteram 
sine gratia, in porticibus remanebitis, mgri eritis; jacentes, non con- 
valescentes: de littera enim prsesumitis. Cf. Enarr. in Ps. Ixxxiii. 7: 
Qui non sanabatur Lege, id est porticibus, sanatur gratia, per passionis 
fidem Domini nostri Jesu Christi. Serm. cxxv.: Ad hoc data est lex, 
qu0e proderet aegrotos, non quae tolleret. Ideo ergo aegroti illi qui in 
domibus suis secretius aegrotare possent, si illae quinque porticus non 
essent, prodebantur oculis omnium in illis porticibus, sed a porticibus 
non sanabantur. . . . Intendite ergo. Erant illae porticus legem signifi- 
cantes, portantea aegrotos non sanantes, prodentes non curantes. Cf. In 
Ev. Juh. tract, xvii. 


i(. THE MIRACULOUS FEEDING OF FIVE THOUSAND, 


Matt. xiv. 15-21; Maek vi. 34--44-; Ltjze ix. 12-17; Johe^ vi. 5-14. 

HIS miracle, with, tlie walking on tlie sea, whicli maj 



JL be regarded as its appendix, is tbe only one which St. 
John has in common with the other Evangelists, and this he 
has in common with them all. It is thns the only one of 
which a fonrfold record exists. It will be my endeavour 
to keep all the narratives in view, as they mutually com¬ 
plete one another. St. Matthew connects the Lord’s re¬ 
tirement to the desert place on the other side of the lake,^ 
with the murder of John the Baptist; ^ St. Mark and St. 
Luke place the two events in juxtaposition, but without 
making one the motive of the other. Erom St. Mark, 
indeed, it might appear as if the immediate motive was 
another, namely, that the Apostles, who were just returned 

* Stanley, Sinai and Falestine, p. 371: ^ The eastern shores of the 
lake have been so slightly visited and described, that any comparison 
of their features with the history must necessarily be precarious. Yet 
one general characteristic of that shore, as compared with the western 
side, has been indicated, which was probably the case in ancient times, 
though in a less degree than at present, namely,, its desert chaiacter. 
Partly this arises from its nearer exposure to the Bedouin tribes; partly 
from its less abundance of springs and streams. There is no recess in 
the eastern hills, no towns along its banks corresponding to those in the 
Plain of Gennesareth. Thus the wilder region became a natural refuge 
from the active life of the western shores. It was “ when He saw great 
multitudes about Him ’’that ^‘He gave commandment to depart unto the 
other side ; ” and again He said, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert 
place, and rest awhile; for there were many coming and going, and they 
had no leisure so much as to eat.”’ 

^ Ludolphus: Ut parceret inimicis ne homicidium Domini jungerent 
hnmicidio Johannis. 


FEEDING OF FIVE THOUSAND. 


279 


from their mission, might have time at once for bodily and 
spiritual refreshment, might not be always in a crowd, 
always ministering to others, never to themselves. But 
thither, ^into a desert jplace lelonging to the city called 
BetHsaida,^ ^ the multitude followed Him; not necessarily 
proceeding ‘afoot,* for (Mark vi. 33) need not, and 
here does not, imply this;* but ‘ hy land* as distinguished 
from Him and his company, who made the passage hy sea. 
They lost so little time on their journey, that although 
their way was much longer about than his, who had only to 
cross the lake, they ‘ outwent * Him, anticipated his com¬ 
ing, so that when He ‘ went forth* not, that is, from the 
ship, but from his solitude, and for the purpose of gra¬ 
ciously receiving those who had followed Him with such 
devotion,* He ^ saw much people * waiting for Him. This 
their presence entirely defeated the very intention for 
which He had sought that solitude; yet not the less He 
‘ received them, and spahe unto them of the kingdom of God, 
and healed them that had need of healing.* St. John’s ap¬ 
parently casual notice of the fact that ‘ the passover a feast 
of the Jews was nigh* is introduced, some say, to explain 
from whence this great multitude, that followed Jesus, 
came; that they were on their road to Jerusalem, there to 
keep the feast. But what should they have done in that 

1 Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 374: ^ Bethsaida” is the eastern city 
of that name, which, from the importance of the new city Julias, built 
there by Philip the Tetrarch [see Josephus, B. J. iii. 9. i; Antiq. xviii. 
2. I ♦ and cf. Pliny, H. N. v. 15], would give its name to the surrounding 
desert tract. The '•‘desert place^'* was either one of the green tablelands 
visible from the hills on the western side, or more probably part of the 
rich plain at the mouth of the Jordan. In the parts of this plain not 
cultivated by the hand of man would be found the ‘‘ much green grass, 
Btill fresh in the spring of the year when this event occurred, before it had 
faded away in the summer sun,—the tall grass, which, broken down by 
the feet of the thousands there gathered together, would make as it were 
“ couches ” (/cXifftac) for them to recline upon.’ This Bethsaida must be 
carefully distinguished from ‘Bethsaida of Galilee,^ the city of Peter, 
A-ndrew, and Philip (Matt. xi. zi; John i. 44 j xii. 21). 

2 Herodotus, vii. no; Plato, Menex. 2360. 

s Ludolphus: Minores se(iuebantur, sed majores persequebantur. 


28p 


THE MIRACULOUS FEEDING 


remote region, so far out of tlie waj of all tlie usual lines 
of communication ? St. John moreover distinctly accounts 
in another way for their presence. They were there, ‘ be¬ 
cause they saw his miracles which He did on them that 
were diseased.’ The notice of the passover here, if it is to 
find an explanation, and is anything more than the fixing 
of a point in the chronology of our Lord’s ministry, must 
be otherwise explained.^ 

The way is prepared for the miracle in a somewhat dif¬ 
ferent manner by the three earlier Evangelists, and by 
St. John. According to them, ‘ When it was evening his 
disciples came to Him, saying. This is a desert place, and the 
time is now past; send the multitude away, that they may 
go into the villages and buy themselves meatl The first 
suggestion comes here from the disciples; while in St. 
John it is the Lord Himself who, in his question to 
Philip, ‘ Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat ? ’ 
(vi. 5) first contemplates the difS.culty. This difference, 
however, is capable of an easy explanation. Our Lord' 
may have put this question to Philip at a somewhat 
earlier period of the afternoon; then left the difficulty 
which He had suggested to work in the minds of the 
Apostles; bringing them, as was so often his manner, to 
see that there was no help in the common course of things; 
and when they had acknowledged this, then, and not be¬ 
fore, stepping in with his higher aid.* 

^ A. Godet lias suggested a very beautiful explanation of the mention 
bere of tbe passover: La mention de la grande fete qui approchait est 
done en relation, non avec I’arrivee des troupes, mais avec I’acte de Jesus. 
Jdsus est dans la position d’un proscrit. II ne pent aller c<5lebrer la 
Paque a Jerusalem. En voyant accourir a lui au desert cette multitude 
affam^e du pain de vie, il est profond^ment emu; il reconnait dans cette 
circonstance inattendue un signal qui lui est donnd par le Pere. Il 
pense aux foules qui dans ce moment meme se pressent a Jerusalem 
pour y manger I’agneau pascal, et il se dit: ‘Et moi aussi jo cdkbrerai 
line Paque ! ’ Cette pensee est celle qui met toute la seSne suivante et le 
discours qui sy rattacbe dans leur veritable jour. Par le ver. 4 Jean nous 
donne la clef du rdcit. 

* For the reconciliation of any apparent contradiction, see Augustine, 
De Cons. Emng. ii. 46. 


OF FIVE THOUSAND, 


St. Jolin, ever careful to avert a misconstruction of liis 
Lord’s words (ii. 21; xxi. 22), above all, any which might 
seem to derogate from his perfect wisdom or love, does 
not fail to inform ns that He asked this question, not as 
needing any counsel, not as being Himself in any real 
embarrassment, ^ for He Himself Jcnew what He would do/ 
but ‘ tem/pting him/ as Wiclif’s translation has it. If we 
admit this word, we must yet understand it in its milder 
sense, as indeed our Version has done ; which has given it, 
‘ to prove him ’ ^ (cf. Gen. xxii. i). It was ^ to prove him/ 
and what measure of faith he had in that Master whom he 
had himself already acknowledged the Messiah, ^ Him of 
whom Moses in the Law and the prophets did write ’ 
(John i. 45). It should now be seen whether Philip, 
calling to mind the great things which Moses had done, 
who gave the people bread from heaven in the wilderness, 
and the notable miracle which Elisha, though on a smaller 
scale than that which now was needed, had performed 
(2 Kin. iv. 43, 44), could so lift up his thoughts as to 
believe that He whom he had recognized as the Christ, 
greater therefore than Moses or the prophets, would be 
equal to the present need. Why Philip was singled out 
for proof it is impossible to say; but whatever the motive, 
he does not abide that proof. Long as he has been with 
Jesus, he has not yet seen, he had not indeed seen at a 
later day, the Father in the Son (John xiv. 9); he does 
not understand that the Lord whom he serves upon earth 
is even the same on whom all creatures wait, who ^openeth 
his hand, and filleth all things living with plenteousness, 
who has sustained them from the creation of the world, 
and who therefore can feed these few thousands that are 
this day more particularly dependent on his bounty. He 
can conceive of no other supplies save such as natural 

^ Ueipa^ujp ahrov. Cf. Augustine (De Serm. Dom. in Mon. ii. 9).’ 
Illud factum est, ut ipse sibi notus fieret qui tentabatur, suamque 
desperationem condomnaret, saturatis turbis de pane Domini, qui eas non 
habere quod ederent existimaverat. 


282 


THE MIRACULOUS FEEDING 


means Qonld procure, and at once comes to the point: 

‘ Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, 
that every one of them may taJce a little,^ The sum he names, 
about some seven pounds sterling, was much larger—for so 
much he would imply—than any which the common purse 
could yield. 

Having drawn from the mouth of Philip this confession 
of inability to meet the present need, He left it to work; 
—till, somewhat later in the day, the disciples came with 
their proposal that He should dismiss the assemblage. 
But bringing now the matter to a head. He replies, ‘ they 
need not depart; give ye them to eatl They repeat with one 
mouth what Philip had before affirmed, how far, namely, 
the outlay was beyond their means. Shall we go and buy 
two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat ? 
We may compare the remonstrance which on a some¬ 
what similar occasion Moses had made : ‘ Shall the flocks 
and the herds be slain for them, to suffice them ? ’ (Hum. 
xi. 22; cf. Ps. Ixxviii. 19, 20); there is the same miti¬ 
gated infidelity in both; the same doubt whether the 
power of the Lord . is equal to that which his word, ex¬ 
pressly or implicitly, has undertaken. But not heeding 
this He proceeds, ‘ How many loaves have ye ? go and seel 
They return and tell Him that the utmost which they 
have at command is five loaves and two fishes,^ the little 
stock which a single lad among the multitude has to 
sell; and which they have purchased, or may purchase, if 
they will.^ 

^ Instead of St. John has 6 - 4 /dpia, both here and xxi. 9. The 

diminutive of o>v (from 'eiPco, to prepare by fire), it properly means any 
Trpo^rcjdyiov or pulmentum, anything, as fiesh, salt, olives, butter, &c., 
which should be eaten as a relish with bread. But by degrees, as 
Plutarch (Sgnip. iv. 4) remarks, oxPov and d^jjdpiov came to be restricted 
with a narrower use to fish alone, generally salt fish, the most usual 
accompaniment of bread (see Suicer, Thes. s. v. dxpdpiov, the Diet, of Gr. 
and Rom. Antt. s. v. Opsmium] and Becker, Charicles, vol. i. p. 436). 

2 Grotius: Apud alios Evangelistas dicuntur habere id quod in 
promptu erat, ut emi posset. 



OF FIVE THOUSAND. 


283 


Witli this slender stock of homeliest fare, for St. John 
informs us that the loaves were of barley (cf. 2 Kin. vii. 
I ; Judg. vii. 13; Ezek. iv. 12), the Lord undertakes to 
satisfy all that multitude (Chrysostom quotes aptly here 
Ps. Ixxviii. 19 : ^ Shall God prepare a table in the wilder¬ 
ness ? ’); for ^ He commanded them to maJce all sit down hy 
companies on the green grass,^ at that early spring season a 
delightful resting-place.^ ^ So the men ^ sat down, in number 
about Jive thousand.^ The mention of this ^ green grassj or 
‘ much grassJ is another point of contact between St. Mark 
and St. John. The former adds a further graphic touch, 
how they sat in companies, ‘ by hundreds and by jiftiesj and 
how these separate groups showed in their symmetrical 
arrangement like so many garden-plots.^ It was a wise 
precaution. The vast assemblage was thus subdivided 
and broken up into manageable portions; there was less 
danger of tumult and confusion, or that the weaker, the 
women and the children, should be past over, while the 
stronger and ruder unduly put themselves forward; the 
Apostles were able to pass easily up and down among the 
groups, and to minister in orderly succession to the neces¬ 
sities of all. 

The taking of the bread in hand was a formal act which 
went before the blessing or giving of' thanks for it (Luke 


* .... prostrati gramine molli, 

Praesertim cum tempestas arridet, et anni 
Tempora conspergunt viridantes floribus herbas. 

- "AvdpfQ (John vi. 10), not di OpwTroi, as in the first clause of the verse; 
which puts this in exact agreement with Matt. xiv. za; see Professor 
Blunt, Duties of a Parish Priest, p. 62. 

^ npa(Ttaf, 7rjoa(Ttai=areolatim, as in square garden-plots. Theophylact 

Upamal yap Xsyovrac rd Iv roiq KrjTToig hd'popa Koppara, ei> olg tpVTtvovra 
Sid(pnpa TToWdicig Xdxava. Some derive it from rrkpac, these patches being 
commonly on the edges of the vineyard or garden; others from TTpaaov, 
porrum, the onion being largely grown in them. Our English ^ in ranks ’ 
does not reproduce the picture to the eye, giving rather the notion of 
continuous lines; Wiclif’s ^ hy parties'* was better. Perhaps ‘ in groups ’ 
would be as near as we could get to it in English. 

* In St. Matthew and St. Mark, evXoyqae ,—in St. Luke, (vXoyrjaev avrovg 
sc. Tovc dpTovc, —in St. John, koI evxapuTTrjaac, which word on occasion 
13 


284 ‘ THE MIEAGULOUS FEEDING 

xxiv. 30; I Cor. xi. 23). Tliis eucharistic act Jesus ac¬ 
complished as the head of the household, and according 
to that beautiful saying of the Talmud, ‘ He that enjoys 
aught without thanksgiving, is as though he robbed God.’ 
Having blessed. He ‘ hraJce and gave the loaves to his dis- 
ciples, and the disciples to the multitude ; ’—the marvel¬ 
lous multiplication taking place, as many affirm, first in 
the Saviour’s own hands, next in those of the Apostles, 
and lastly in the hands of the eaters. This may have 
been so; but whether thus or in some other way, ^ they did 
all eat, and iv ere filled’ ^ (Psal. cxlv. 16). Christ was herein 
fulfilling for the multitude his own promise, ^ Seek ye first 
the kingdom of God, and his righteousness ; and all these 
things shall be added unto you’ (Matt. vi. 33). They had 
come taking no thought, for three days at least, of what 
they should eat or what they should drink, only desirous 
to hear the word of life, only seeking the kingdom of 
heaven; and now the lower things, according to the word 
of the promise, were added unto them. 

With this miracle, even more than with that of the water 
changed into wine, when we endeavour to realize to our¬ 
selves the manner of the miracle, it evermore eludes our 
grasp, and baffies imagination. Nor is this strange; for in¬ 
deed, how can it be possible to bring within forms of our 
conception any act of creation, any becoming ? in thought 
to bridge over the gulf between not-being and being, 

of the second multiplying of the bread both St. Matthew (xv. 36) and St. 
Mark (viii. 6) use, though the latter has in the verse following tyKoyfiaaQ 
in respect of the fishes. The terms are synonymous: cf. Matt. xxvi. 27, 
with the parallels, i Cor. x. 16; xi. 24; and see Grotius on Matt. xxvi. 
26. Origen’s view that our Lord wrought the wonder \ 6 y({i Kal ry 
f uXoyi^j that this moment of taking the loaves into his hand and blessing, 
was the wonder-crisis, is sustained by the fact that all four Evangelists 
bring out the circumstance of the blessing, and most of all by St. Luke’s 
words, tv\ 6 yr]stv avTovQi cf. John vi. 23. 

^ Xopra^eaOai, properly, to fodder cattle, was transferred by writers of 
the later Comedy to the feeding of men; see examples in Athenoeus 
{Deipnos. iii. 56), where one justifies himself for using as 

==K:op£( 70 ) 7 f'at (pf. Stip'z, Be Dial. Maced, pp. 200-202). 


OF FIVE THOUSAND. 


285 


wMcli yet is bridged over in every creative act? And 
this being so, there is no force in the objection which one 
has made against the historical truth of this narrative, 
namely, that ^ there is no attempt by closer description to 
make clear in its details the manner and process by which 
this wonderful bread was formed. It is true wisdom, to 
leave the indescribable imdescribed, and without so much 
as an attempt at the description.' They who bear record 
of these things appeal to the same faith, on the part of 
their readers or hearers, as that which believes ‘ that the 
worlds were framed hy the Word of God, so that things 
which are seen, were not made of things which do appear ’ 
(Heb. xi. 3). 

An analogy, and, so to speak, a help to the understand¬ 
ing of this miracle has been found, in that which year by 
year is accomplished in the field, where a single grain of 
corn multiplies itself, and in the end unfolds in numerous 
ears ;—and, with this analogy in view, many beautiful re¬ 
marks have been made; as this, that while God’s every¬ 
day miracles had grown cheap in men’s sight by continual 
repetition. He had therefore reserved something, not more 
wonderful, but less frequent, to arouse men’s minds to a 
new admiration. Others have urged that here, as in the 
case of the water made wine, Christ did but compress into 
a single moment all those processes which in ordinary cir¬ 
cumstances He, the same Lord of nature, causes more slowly 
to succeed one another.^ But, true as in its measure is 

^ Thus Hilary {De Trin. iii. § 6) : Fallunt momenta visum, dum 
plenam fragmentis manum sequeris, alteram sine damno portionis sua 3 

contueris.Non sensus non visus profectum tarn inconspicahilis 

operationis assequitur. Est, quod non erat; videtur quod non intelli- 
gitur; solum superest ut Deus omnia posse credatur. Cf. Ambrose, 
Exp. in Luc. vi. 85. 

^ Augustine {Serm. cxxx. i): Grande miraculum: sed non multum 
mirabimur factum, si adtendamus facientem. Hie multiplicavit in 
manibus frangentium quinque panes, qui in terra germinantia multiplicat 
semina, ut grana pauca mittantur, et horrea repleantur. Sed quia illud 
oinni anno facit, nemo miratiir. Admirationem tollit non lacti vilitaa 
sed assiduitas. And again (^In Ev. Joh. tract, xxiv.): Quia enim .... 



286 


THE MIRACULOUS FEEDING 


tliis last observation, it mnst not be forgotten that the 
analogy is good only to a certain point. For that which 
finds place in the field is the unfolding of the seed accord¬ 
ing to the law of its own being. Thus, if the Lord had 
taken a few grains of corn and cast them into the ground, 
and if, a moment after, a large harvest had sprung up, to 
this the name of such a ‘ divinely-hastened process ’ might 
have been fitly applied.* But with bread it is otherwise; 
since, before that is made, there must be new interpo¬ 
sitions of man’s art, and those of such a nature as that by 
them the very life, which up to this point has unfolded 
itself, must be crushed and destroyed. A grain of wheat 
left to itself could never, according to the laws of natural 
development, issue in a loaf of bread. And, moreover, the 
Lord does not start from the simple germ, from the lifeful 
rudiments, in which all the seeds of a future life might be 
supposed to be wrapt up, and by Him rapidly developed, 
but with the latest artificial product. The oak is folded 

miracula ejus, qiiibus totum mimdum regit, uuiversamqiie creaturam 
administrat, assiduitate viluerunt, ita ut pene nemo dignetur adtendere 
opera Dei mira et stupenda in quolibet seminis grano; secundum ipsam 
suaru misericordiam servavit sibi quaedam quse faceret opportune tempore 
prseter usitatum cursum ordinemque naturje, ut non majora sed insolita 
videndo stuperent, quibus quotidiana viluerant. . . . ! Illud mirantur 
homines, non quia majus est, sed quia rarum est. Quis enim et nunc 
pascit universum mundum, nisi ille qui de paucis granis segetes creat ? 
Fecit ergo quomodo Deus. Unde enim multiplicat de paucis granis 
segetes, inde in manibus suis multiplicavit quinque panes. Potestas enim 
erat in manibus Cbristi. Panes autem illi quinque quasi semina erant 
non quidem terrae mandata, sed ab eo qui terram fecit, multiplicata. And 
again, Scrm. cxxvi. 3: Quotidiana miracula Dei non facilitate sed assi¬ 
duitate viluerant. . . . Mirati sunt homines, Dominum Deum nostrum 
Jesum Christum de quinque panibus saginasse tot millia, et non mi¬ 
rantur per pauca grana impleri segetibus terras.Quia tibi ista 

viluerant, venit ipse ad facienda insolita, ut et in ipsis solitis a<>-noscere3 
Artificem tuum. Cf. Serm. ccxlvii. 

1 In the Emngelium S. ThomcB such a miracle is ascribed to the child 
Jesus; the wonder, however, not consisting in the swiftness, but the 
largeness, of the return. He goes out at sowing time with Joseph into 
the field, and sows there a single grain of wheat; from this He has the 
return of a hundred cors, which He distributes to the poor fThilo. Cod^ 
Apociyphus, p. 302). 




OF FIVE THOUSAND. 


287 


up in tlie acorn, but not in the piece of timber hewn and 
shaped from itself. This analogy then, even as such, pre¬ 
sently breaks down; and, renouncing all helps to faith 
from this quarter,' we must be content to behold in this 
multiplying of the bread an act of divine omnipotence,^— 
not indeed now, as at the first, of absolute creation out of 
nothing, since there was a substratum to work on in the 
original loaves and fishes, but an act of creative accretion; 
a quantitative, as in the water turned into wine there was 
a qualitative, miracle, the bread growing in the Lord’s 
hands, so that from th at litt^Q s tock all the multitude were 
abundantly supplied. ! Thus He, all whose works were 
‘ signs ’ and had a tongue by which they spoke to the 
world, did in this miracle proclaim Himself the true bread 
of the world, which should satisfy the hunger of men; the 
unexhausted and inexhaustible source of all life, in whom 
there should be enough and to spare for all the spiritual 
needs of all hungering souls in all ages.^ | For, in Augus- 

^ The attempt to find in the naturSTworTT’anSogies, nearer or more 
remote, for the miracles may spring from two, and those very opposite, 
motives. Some will endeavour hereby to realize to themselves, so far as 
this is allowed them, the course of the miracle, and by the help of work¬ 
ings not wholly dissimilar, to bring it vividly before the eye of their 
mind,—delighted in thus finding traces of one and the same God in the 
lower world and the higher, and in marking how the natural and super¬ 
natural are concentric circles, though one wider than and containing the 
other; as when in animal magnetism analogies have be“en found to the 
healing power which streamed forth from Christ, and this by some who 
have kept this obscure and perilous power of our lower nature altogether 
distinct from that pure element of light and life, which went forth and 
was diffused from Him. But these analogies may be sought out and 
welcomed in a very difierent spirit, with the view, by their aid, of escaping 
from the miraculous in the miracle altogether; as when some have 
eagerly snatched at these same facts of animal magnetism, not as lower 
and remote analogies, but as identical, or well nigb identical, facts with 
the miraculous healings of our Lord. 

* Augustine {In Ev. Joh. tract, ix.) : Omnipotentia Domini quasi fons 
panis erat; and again {Enarr. ii. in Es. cx. 10): Fontes panis erant in; 
manibus Domini. 

* Thus Prudentius: 

Tu cibus panisque noster, tu perennis suavitas ; 

Nescit esurire in sevum qui tuam sumit dapem, 

Nec lacunam ventris implct, sed fovet vitali.% 



288 


THE MIRACULOUS FEEDING 

tine’s language, once already quoted, ‘He was the Word 
of God;, and all the acts of the Word are themselves 
words for us ; they are not as pictures, merely to look at 
and admire, hut as letters, which we must seek to read 
and understand.’ ^ 

When all had eaten and were satisfied, the disciples ‘ tooh 
up of the fragments that remained twelve hasTcets fall,’ for 
every Apostle a basket; St. Mark alone records that it was 
so done with the fishes also; the existence of these frag¬ 
ments witnessing that there had been enough for all, and 
to spare (2 Kin. iv. 43, 44; Ruth ii. 14). Only St. John 
mentions that they do this at their Lord’s bidding, and 
only he the motive, ‘ that nothing he lostj^ For thus, as 
Olshausen remarks, with the Lord of nature, as with 
nature herself, the most prodigal bounty goes hand in hand 
with the nicest and exactest economy; and He who had 
but now shown Himself God, again submits Himself to the 
laws and proprieties of his earthly condition, so that, as in 
the miracle itself his power, in this command his humility, 
shines eminently forth. This which remained over must 
have immensely exceeded in bulk and quantity the original 
stock; and we thus have here a visible symbol of that 
love which exhausts not itself by loving, but after all its 
outgoings upon others, abides itself far richer than it 
would have done but for these ; of the multiplying which 
there ever is in a true dispensing ; of the increasing which 
may go along with a scattering (Prov. xi. 24; cf. 2 Kin. 
iv. 1-7). 

St. John,—always careful to note whatever actively 
stirred up the malignity of Christ’s enemies, and thus 

^ Vertum Dei est Christus, qiii non solum sonis sed etiam factis 
loquitur hominibus; cf. In Ev. Joh. tract, xxiv.: Interrogemus ipsa 
miracula quid nobis loquantur de Christo; habent enim, si intelligantur, 
linguam suam. 

* Guilliaud adds another reason for this command: Ne quis phantasma, 
prsestigium, aut imaginationem esse causaretur, dixit discipulis, Colligite 
reliquias convivii, ne quid pereat. 


OF FIVE THOUSAND. 


289 


hastened the final catastrophe,—to which nothing more 
contributed than the utterances of the people’s favour,— 
alone tells ns of the impression which this miracle left 
upon the multitude; how ^ they that had seen the mir¬ 
acle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth the prophet 
that should come into the world/ the prophet of whom 
Moses spake, like to himself, whom God would raise up 
(J)eut. xviii. 15; cf. John i. 21; Mai. iii. i); and how 
they would fain, with or without his consent, have made 
Him their king ; for they recognized the kingly, as well as 
the prophetic, character of their future Messiah (John i. 
50): and, as St. John’s word implies, would have carried 
Him, willing or unwilling, to Jerusalem, and installed 
Him there in the royal seat of David.* It was not merely 
the power which He here displayed that moved them so 
mightily, but the fact that a miracle exactly of this cha¬ 
racter was looked for from the Messiah. He was to repeat, 
so to say, the miracles of Moses. As Moses, the first re¬ 
deemer, had given bread of wonder to the people in the 
wilderness, even so should the later Redeemer do the same.® 
Thus too, when the first enthusiasm which this work had 
stirred was spent, the Jews compare it with what Moses 
had done, not any longer to find evidence here that as 
great or a greater prophet was among them, but in¬ 
vidiously to' depress the present miracle by comparison 
with the past; and in the inferiority of the later to find 
proof that He who wrought it was no Messiah after all, 
with the right to rebuke and command them. ‘ What sign 
showest Thou, that we may see and believe Thee ? What 
dost Thou work? Our fathers did eat manna in the 

^ Godet: Le terme apTraZnt' ne permet pas douter que le projet ne fut 
de s’emparer de Jdsus, meme malgi’e lui, afin d’aller le couronner a 
Jerusalem. 

2 Schoettgen (Jlor. Ileh. in loc., from the Midrasch Cokeleth'): Quem- 
admodum Gcei primus, sic quoque erit postremus. Goel primus des- 
cendere fecit Man, q. d. Exod. xvi. 4, Et pluere faciam vobis panem de 
cselo. Sic quoque Goel postremus descendere facit Man, q. d. Ps. Ixxii. 
16, Erit multitudo frumenti super lerram. 


2 go MIRACULOUS FEEDING OF FIVE THOUSAND, 

desert, as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to 
eat ’ (John vi. 30, 31); ^ while the bread which Thou hast 
given,’ for so much they would imply, ‘ is but this com¬ 
mon bread of earth, wherewith Thou hast once nourished 
a few thousands.’^ 

But .whatever resemblance may exist between that 
miracle and this, there is another in the Old Testament, 
already referred to, which this resembles more nearly, that 
namely which Elisha wrought, when with the twenty 
loaves of barley he satisfied a hundred men (2 Kin. iv. 
42-44). All the rudiments of this miracle there appear;* 
the two substances, one artificial, one natural, from which 
the many persons are fed; as here bread and fish, so there 
bread and fresh ears of corn. As the disciples are incre¬ 
dulous here, so there the servitor asks, ‘ Should I set this 
before a hundred men ? ’ As here twelve baskets of frag¬ 
ments remain, so there ^ they did eat, and left thereof.’ 
Yet were they only the weaker rudiments of this miracle; 
a circumstance which the difference between the servants 
and the Lord sufficiently explains. The prophets having 
grace only in measure, so in measure they wrought their 
works; but the Son, working with infinite power, and 
with power not lent Him, but his own, did all with much 
superabundance. 

^ Tertullian {Adv. Marc. iv. 21): Non imo die, sed annis quadraginta, 
Dec de inferioribus materiis panis et piscis, sed de manna ceelesti, nec 
quinque circiter sed sexcenta millia hominum protelavit. 

^ Tertullian notes this prefiguration of the miracles of Christ in those 
of his servants, against the Gnostics, who would fain have cut loose the 
New Testament from the Old, and found not merely distinction, but direct 
opposition, between them {Adv. Marc. iv. 21): Invenies totum hunc 
ordinem Christi circa ilium Dei hominem, qui oblatos sibi viginti hor- 
dcaceos panes cum popiilo distribui jussisset, et minister ejus proindo 
comparatS, multitudine et pabuli mediocritate, respondisset. Quid ergo 
hoc dem in conspectu centum hominum ? Da, inquit, et manducabant. 

. 0 Christum et in novis veterem! Haec itaque quse viderat, 

Petrus, et cum pristinis comparat, et non tantum retro facta, sed et in 
futurum jam tunc prophetantia recognoverat, interroganti Domino, 
quisnam illis videretur, cum pro omnibus responderet, Tu es Christus, 
non potest non eum sensisse Ohrisiiim, nisi quern noverat in scripturis, 
quem jam recensebat in factis. 



17 . THE WALKING ON THE SEA. 


Matt. xiy. 22-33; Mark vi. 45-52; John vi. 14-21. 

rilHE three Evangelists who narrate this miracle alike 
-L place it in immediate sequence to the feeding of the 
five thousand, and on the evening of the same day. The 
two earlier relate, that when all were fed, and the Lord 
was now about to dismiss the multitude, ‘ straightway He 
constrained his discijples to get into the ship,’ Why He 
should have found it necessary to ‘ constrain ’ them, they 
do not tell us. Some vaguely suggest a general unwilling¬ 
ness on their part to be separated, even for a season, from 
their Lord.^ But the true key to the phrase is obtained, 
when we compare the parallel record of St. John. There 
we learn that the multitude desired to take Jesus by force 
and make Him a king; and that He only avoided this, by 
departing into a mountain Himself alone. The disciples 
could not avoid being aware of the shape which the 
popular enthusiasm, roused to the highest pitch by the 
recent miracle, was taking. This was exactly to their 
mind; it was precisely this which they had long hoped would 
arrive ; so that they must have been most reluctant to quit 
their Master at the moment of his approaching exaltation. 
So, however, it must be, and while He dismisses the 
people, they must ^ go before Him unto the other side ’ or 
^ unto Bethsaida,’ as St. Mark has it. There is no contra¬ 
diction between this account and •- St. John’s, that they 
went over the sea towards Capernaum*, ’ since this Bethsaida, 

' Aa Jerome; and Chrysostom: To riva'tKa(rfv cl fivfv,Tnv TriX\i)v 
frpooftipiuv CuxvvQ tCov paOtjrwu, 


TEE WALEINa ON TEE SEA. 


292 

not identical with that just before mentioned by St. Luke 
(ix. 10), and for distinction called Bethsaida Julias, but 
the city of Philip and Andrew and Peter (John i. 44), lay 
on the western side of the lake, in the same direction as 
Capernaum, and near to it; is indeed generally supposed 
to have been a fishing suburb of that town. St. Matthew, 
and St. Mark with him, makes two evenings to this day,— 
one which had already commenced before the preparations 
for the feeding of the multitude had begun (ver. 15), the 
other now when the disciples had entered into the ship, 
and set forth on their voyage (ver. 23). And this was an 
ordinary way of speaking among the Jews, the first 
evening being very much pur afternoon (see Luke ix. 12, 
where the ‘ evening ’ of Matthew and Mark is described as 
the season ^ when the day began to wear away ’); the second 
evening^ being the twilight, or from six o’clock to twilight; 
on which absolute darkness followed. It was the first 
evening, or afternoon, when the preparations for feeding 
the five thousand commenced; the second, when the 
disciples took ship. 

‘ And when He had sent the multitudes away, He went up 
into a mountain apart to pray ; and ivhen even was come, He 
was there alone."* Prom thence, with the watchful eye of 
love, ‘jBTe saw them toiling in rowing* (cf. Exod. iii. 7; Ps. 
Ivi. 8); for in their Lord’s absence they were able to make 
no effectual progress : ^ the wind was contrary* and the sea 
rough: their sails, of course, could profit them nothing. 
It was now ‘ the fourth watch of the night* near morning 
therefore, and notwithstanding all their efforts they had 
not accomplished more than ‘five and twenty or thirty 
furlongs* scarcely, that is, more than hulf of them way, 
the lake being forty or forty-five furlongs in breadth.^ 

' ’O-ipia SevTipa. 

2 Thomson (The Land and the Book, pt. ii. c. 25) : ^My experience in 
this region enables me to sympathize with the disciples in their lono- 
night’s contest with the wind. I spent a night in that Wady Shukalvif^ 
fcome thiee miles up it, to the left of us. The sun had scarcely set when 


THE WALKING ON THE SEA. 


293 


Probably they were ever finding themselves more unable 
to proceed, the danger probably was ever increasing, when 
suddenly they see their Lord ^walking on the sea,’^ and ' 
already close to their bark. It was his purpose* in all the 
events of this night, as Chrysostom well brings out, to 
train his disciples to higher things than hitherto they had 
learned. That first storm (Matt. viii. 24) was by day, 
this was by night. Then He was present in the ship with 
them ; if it came to the worst, they knew that they might 
rouse Him; while the mere fact of his presence must have 
given them the sense of a comparative security. But they 

the wind began to rush down toward the lake, and it continued all night 
long wdth constantly increasing violence, so that when we reached the 
shore next morning the face of the lake was like a huge boiling caldron. 
The wind howled down every wady from the north-east and east with 
such fury that no efforts of rowers could have brought a boat to shore at 
any point along that coast. In a wind like that, the disciples must have 
been driven quite across to Gennesaret, as we know they were.’ 

^ Many have supposed that Lucian, in his account of the cork-footed 
race ((ptXXo-nodecj Ver. Hist. ii. 4) whom he saw from his ship i-irl tov 
TTtXdyovQ SiciQsovraCf intended a scoff at this miracle. I doubt whetlier 
so expert a scoffer, had he meant this, would not have done it better; 
still the hint which he gives (i, 2), that something lies under these 
absurd and extravagant travellers’ tales which he has strung together, 
that they every one contain allusions to the fables and portents of poets 
and historians and philosophers, leaves it not altogether improbable ; and 
in the Philopseudes, where there are more distinct side-glances at the 
miracles in the Gospels,—as for instance, a miraculously-healed man 
taking up his bed (n); the expulsion of the evil spirit from a demoniac 
(16), reminding one singularly of that recorded Mark ix. 14-29—this also 
of walking on the water recurs (13), among the incredible things pro¬ 
posed for the wise man’s belief. The Golden City of the Blest, with its 
diamond walls, its floors of ivory, its vines bearing fruit every month 
(Fhr. Hist.n. 11-13), may very well be conceived in rivalry and in 
ridicule of the description of the New Jerusalem (Rev. xxi. 19 ; xxii. 2), 
as the story of a multitude of men comfortably housed for some years in 
the belly of a whale {Ih. i. 30-42) may be designed as an outdoing of 
Jonah’s three days’ abode in the same place. This last we know was an 
especial object of the flouts of the heathen; see Augustine (Ep. cii. qu. 6), 
and Josephus (Antt. ix. 10, § 2), who aiming to make his works accept¬ 
able to the educated heathen, gets over it with a Xoyoq —^ as some say.’ 
On the point of view from which Lucian contemplated Christianity see 
Krebs, JDe Malitioso Luciani Consilio &c. in his Opusc. Acad. p. 308 ; 
Tzschlrner, Fall des Heidodhmns, p. 320 ; and Theol. Studien u. KriiiKen, 
1851, pp. 826-902. 


294 


TEE WALKING ON TEE SEA, 


must leicrn to walk by faith and not by sight; He will not 
have them as the ivy, needing always an outward support, 
but as hardy forest-trees, which can brave a blast; and 
this time He puts them forth into the danger alone, even 
as some loving mother-bird thrusts her fledglings from the 
nest, that they may And their own wings and learn to use 
them. And the happy issue of all shall awaken in them 
an abiding confidence in his ever-ready help; for as his 
walking on the sea must have been altogether unimagined 
and unimaginable by them, they may have easily despaired 
of that help reaching them; but He, when He has tried 
them to the uttermost, ‘ in the fourth watch of the night’ 
the same morning watch in which He had wrought of old 
another deliverance, not really more significant, though 
on a mightier scale (Exod. xiv. 24), appears beside them; 
thus teaching them for all their after life, in all coming 
storms of temptation, that He is near them; that how¬ 
ever He may not be seen always by their bodily eyes, how¬ 
ever they may appear cut off from his assistance, yet is He 
indeed a very present help in the needful time of trouble ; 
that heaviness may endure for a night, but joy cometh in 
the morning. 

Hor ought we, I think, to fail to recognize the symbolic 
character which this whole transaction wears. As that 
bark upon those stormy billows, such is oftentimes the 
Church, tossed to and fro on the waves of the troublesome 
world. It seems as though its Lord had forgotten it, so 
little is the way it makes; so baffled is it and tormented 
by opposing winds and waves. But his eye is on it still; 
He is in the mountain apart praying; ever living, an 
ascended Saviour, to make intercession for his people. 
And when at length the extremity of the need has arrived. 
He is suddenly with it, and that in marvellous ways past 
finding out; and then all that before was so laborious is 
easy, and the toiling rowers are anon at the haven where 
they would be. 

Thus Bede: Labor discipulorum in remigando et contrarius eia 


THE WALKING ON THE SEA. 


295 


‘ And when the discijples saw Him walking on the sea they 
were troubled, saying. It is a spirit ; ^ and they cried out for 
fear I It is often so. Let Him only come to his people in 
some unwonted manner, as He has not been used to come 
in time past, in the shape of some affliction, in the way of 
some cross, and they know Him not. Their Lord, and 
charged with blessings for them. He yet seems to them 
as some terrible phantom of the night; and they too cry 
out for fear.** The disciples on this occasion might per¬ 
haps have pleaded that there was that in his approach to 
their bark, which would not allow them to recognize Him 
for what He was. He ^ would have passed them by. How 
could they suppose that this was their Lord, hastening to 
the help of his own ? The circumstance perplexed them 
for a moment; it has perplexed others lastingly. Those 
who are on the watch to discover inner inconsistencies in 
the Gospels have asked, ‘ Why appear to pass them by 
and to escape them, when the only aim of his coming was 
to re-assure and to aid them ? when He so little really 
meant to do this, that no sooner was He recognized and 
detained by their cries, than He ascended into the ship 

Tentus labores sanctas EcclesiaB varios designat, qusD inter iindas seculi 
adversantis et immundorum flatus spiritiium ad quietem patriae caelestis, 
quasi ad fidam litoris stationem, pervenire conatiir. Ubi bene dicitur, 
quia navis erat in medio mari et ipse solus in terra; quia nonnunquam 
Ecclesia tantis Gentilium pressuris non solum afflicta, sed et foedata est, 
ut, si fieri posset, Iledemptor ipsius earn prorsus deseruisse ad tempus 
videretur. . . . Videt [tamen] Dominus laborantes in mari, quamvis 
ipse positus in terra j quia etsi ad horam difierre videatur auxilium 
Iribulatis impendere, nibilominus eos, ne in tribulationibus deficiant, suse 
respectu pietatis corroborat, et aliquando etiam. manifesto adjutorio, victis 
adversitatibus, quasi calcatis sedatisque fluctuum voluminibus, liberat. 
Cf. Augustine, Serm. Ixxv. So too Anselm {Horn, iii.) : Nam quia 
insurgunt fluctus, potest ista navicula turbari, sed quia Cbristus orat, 
non potest mergi. 

^ fpai>Tarfia (cL W^isd. Xrii. vvKTtpivov (Job. XX. 8). 

* Bengel; Turhati sunt. Sa3pe Cbristum pro alio potius quara pro 
Cbristo habemus. 

® Calvin: Pii audito ejus nomine, quod illis est certura et divini amoris 
et suae salutis pignus, quasi a morte in vitam excitati animos colligunt, 
et quasi serenum caelum hilares conspiciunt, quieti in terra residejit, et 
omnium malorum victores ejus praesidium omnibus periculis opponunt. 


296 


THE WALKING ON THE SEA. 


where they were ? ’ Doubtless this, as each other dealing 
of God with his servants, is hard to be understood of 
those to whom the entire life of faith is altogether strange. 
He will seem to pass them by, seem to forsalie them; 
and so evoke their prayer and their cry, that He would 
not pass them by, that He would not forsake them.^ Hot 
otherwise, walking with his two disciples to Emmaus, after 
his resurrection, ‘ He made as though He would have gone 
further ■ (Luke xxiv. 28), thus drawing out from them, the 
entreaty that He would abide. It is evermore thus; we 
have here no exceptional dealing, but one finding its 
analogies everywhere in the Scripture and in the Christian 
life. What part does Christ sustain here different from 
that which in the parable of the Unjust Judge (Luke xviii. 
2), or the churlish Friend (Luke xi. 5), He ascribes to God? 
or different from that which He Himself sustained when 
He came not to the help of the sisters of Bethany in what 
seemed the utmost extremity of their need (John xi. 6) ? 
And are not all the complaints of the faithful in the 
PspJms, that God hides his face, that He gives them into 
the hands of their enemies, that He is absent from them 
so long, confessions that He does so deal with his servants, 
that by delaying and seeming to pass them by. He quickens 
their faith, and calls out their prayers that He would come 
to them soon, and abide with them always ? 

And now, as one by that cry of distress arrested and de¬ 
tained, He at once scatters and rebukes their fears : ‘ Be 
of good cheer; it is I; he not afraid.’ How often has He 
to speak this word of encouragement even to his own; 
almost always when they are brought suddenly or in any 
unusual way face to face with Him ; thus see Gen. xv. i ; 
xxi. 17 ; xxvi. 24; Judg. vi. 23 ; Matt. xvii. 7; xxviii. 5 ; 

1 Augustine {Be Cons. Evang. ii. 47); Quomodo ergo eos volebat 
praeterire, quos paventes ita confirmat, nisi quia ilia voluntas praetereundi 
ad eiiciendum ilium ciamorem valebat, cuisubveniri oportebat ? Corn, a 
Lapide: Volebat prmterire eos, quasi eos non curans, nec ad eos pertineus, 
sed alio pergens, ut in eis metuni et ciamorem excitaret. 


THE WALKING ON THE SEA. 


297 


Luke ii. 10 ; Kev. i. 17). And now follows that character¬ 
istic rejoinder of Peter, which, with its consequences, St. 
Matthew alone records : ‘ Lord^ if it he Thou, hid me come 
unto Thee on the water J That ^if’ must not be interpreted 
as implying a doubt whether it was the Lord or not. A 
Thomas, indeed, may have required to have Jesus with him 
in the ship, ere he would fully believe that it was no phan¬ 
tom, but his very Lord; but Peter’s fault would be of 
another kind. His words mean rather : ^ Since it is Thou, 
command me to come unto Thee; ’ for he feels rightly 
that Christ’s command must go before his coming. And, 
doubtless, it was the promptness and forwardness of love 
which made him ask for this command, which made him 
desire to be where his Lord was (John xxi. 7). Perhaps, 
too, he would compensate for that exclamation of terror 
in which he had joined with the rest, by an heroic act of 
courage and affiance. And yet there was a fault in all 
this, as the issue proved, such as made the whole incident 
a rehearsal of the greater presumption and the more 
serious fall in store for the too confident disciple (Matt, 
xxvi. 33 , 70)* lu that ^ Bid me,’ the fault may be found. 
He will outdo and outdare the other disciples; will signa¬ 
lize himself by a mightier testimony of faith than anyone 
of them will venture to render. It is but in another shape, 
^Although all shall be offended, yet will not I.’ 

Let us observe, and with reverence admire, the wisdom 
and love of the Lord’s answer. Another, with enough of 
spiritual insight to detect what was amiss in Peter’s pro¬ 
posal, might yet by less skilful treatment have marred all, 
and lost for him the lessons it so much behoved him to 
receive. Had his Lord, for example, commanded him to 
remain where he was. He would at once have checked the 
outbreaks of his fervent spirit, which, when purified from 
the carnal that mingled with them, were to carry him so far, 
and caused him to miss the instruction which through his 
partial failure he obtained. Hut with more gracious and 


THE WALKING ON THE SEA. 


298 

discriminating wisdom the great Master of souls ; who yet, 
knowing what the event must prove, pledges not Himself 
for the issue of his coming. Peter had said, ^ Bid me ; ’ 
there is no ‘ I bid,’ in the Lord’s reply. Peter had said, 

‘come unto Thee; ’ the ‘ unto Me’ disappears from the Lord’s 
answer; which is only ‘ Come ; ’ that is, ‘ if thou wilt; 
make the experiment, if thou desirest.’ It is a merely 
permissive ^ Gome ; ’ like Joab’s ‘ Eun ’ to Ahimaaz (2 
Sam. xviii. 22). Doubtless it contained a pledge that 
Peter should not be wholly swallowed up by the waves, 
but none for the successful issue of the feat; which all 
would in very faithfulness have been involved, had the 
Lord’s words been the entire echo of his disciple’s. What 
the issue should be, depended upon Peter himself,—whe¬ 
ther he should keep the beginning of his confidence firm 
unto the end. And He who knew what was in man, knew 
that he would not; that this was not the pure courage of 
faith; that what of carnal over-boldness there was in it 
would infallibly be exchanged, when the stress of the trial 
came, for fear and unbelief. 

It was even so. ^ When Peter was come down out of the 
ship, he walked on the water, to go to‘ Jesus.’ This for a 
while ; so long as he looked to his Lord and to Him only, 
he also was able to walk upon the unsteady surface of the 
sea, to tread upon the waters, which for him also were not 
waves. But when he took counsel of flesh and blood, when 
he saw something else besides Jesus, then, because ^he saw 
the wind boisterous, he was afraid, and beginning to sink,^ he 
cried, saying. Lord, save me.’ He who had thought to make 
a show before all the other disciples of a courage which 
transcended theirs, must now in the presence of them all 
confess his terror, and reveal the weakness, as he had 
thought to display the strength, of his faith. In this 
moment of peril his swimmer’s art (John xxi. 7) profits 
him nothing; for there is no mingling in this way of 
' K«ra7rorr/^e(rca(=/3i»6i^£(Tra', Lulce V. 7 ; i Tim. vi. 9. 


THE WALKING ON THE SEA. 


299 

nature and of grace. He who has entered the wonder- 
world of grace must not suppose that he may withdraw 
from it at any moment that he will, and betake himself 
to his old resources of nature. He has foregone these, 
and must cany through what he has begun, or fail at his 
peril. 

But Peter has to do with One who will not allow him 
greatly to fall. His experience shall be that of the 
Psalmist I ‘When I said. My foot slippeth, thy mercy, 
O Lord, held me up.’ ^ His ^ Lord, save me,’ is answered 
at once. ^Immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and 
caught him.^ And then how gracious the rebuke ! ‘ 0 thou 
of little faith /’ He does not say ‘of none I ’ and ‘ Wherefore 
didst thou douht ? ’ not ‘ Wherefore didst thou come ? ’ thus, 
instead of checking, as He then would have done, the fu¬ 
ture impulses of his servant’s boldness, encouraging them 
rather ; showing him how he could do all things through 
Christ strengthening him, and that his error lay, not in 
undertaking too much, but in too little relying upon that 
strength which would have triumphantly borne him 
through all.^ And not until by that sustaining hand He 
has restored confidence to the fearful one, and made him 
feel that he can indeed tread under foot those waves of the 
unquiet sea, does He speak even this word of a gentle re¬ 
buke. The courage of the disciple has already returned, so 
that the Master speaks of his doubt as of something which 
is already past; ‘ Wherefore didst thou douht ? Before the 
doubt arose in thy heart, thou didst walk on these waves, 
and now that thy faith has returned, thou dost walk on 
them again; thou seest that it is not impossible, that it 
lies but in thy faithful will; that all things are possible 
to him that believeth.’ 

^ Augustine very beautifully brings together those words of the 
Psalmist and this incident, making them mutually to illustrate one 
another (Enarr. in Ps. xciii. 18). 

^ Bengel: Non reprehenditur quod exierit e navi, sed quod non man- 
gerit in firraitate fidei. 


300 


THE WALKING ON TEE SEA. 


We must look at this episode of the miracle as itself 
also symbolic. Peter is here the example of all the faith¬ 
ful of all times, in the seasons of their unfaithfulness and 
fear. So long as they are strong in faith, they are able to 
tread under foot all the most turbulent agitations of an 
unquiet world; but when they are afraid, when, instead 
of ^ looking unto Jesus,’ they look at the stormy winds and 
waters, then these prevail against them, and they begin 
to sink, and were it not for Christ’s sustaining hand, 
which is stretched out in answer to their cry, they would 
be wholly overwhelmed and swallowed up.^ 

‘ And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceasedi 
Those on the watch for discrepancies between one Evan¬ 
gelist and another are pleased here to discover such, be¬ 
tween St. Matthew and St. Mark on one side, and St. John 
on the other. If, they say, we are to believe the former, 
the Lord did now with his disciple go up into the ship; 
if, on the contrary, we accept the authority of St. John, 
we must then suppose that the disciples were willing to 
receive Him; but did not so in fact, the ship being 
rapidly, and, as would seem, with miraculous swiftness, 
brought to the land. The whole question turns on the 
words which we translate, and I have no doubt rightly as 
regards the circumstance which actually took place, ^ they 
willingly received Him into the ship.’ It is quite true they 

1 Augustine {Enarr. in Ps. xxxix. 6): Calca mare, ne mergaris in 
mari. And again (Sertn. Ixxxvi. 6): Attendite seculum quasi mare, 
ventus validus et magna tempestas. Unicuique sua cupiditas, tempestas 
est. Amas Deura, ambulas super mare: sub pedibus tuis est seculi 
tumor. Amas seculum, absorbebit te. Amatores suos vorare novit non 
portare. Sed cum fluctuat cupiditate cor tuum, ut vincas tuani cupidi- 
tatem, invoca Christi divinitatem. . . . Et si motus est pes tuns, si 
titubas, si aliqua non superas, si mergi incipis, die, Domine, pereo, libera 
me. Die, Domine, pereo, ne pereas. Solus enim a morte carnis liberat 
te, qui mortuus est in came pro te. And again : Titubatio ista, fratres, 
quasi mors fidei fuit Sed ubi exclamavit, fides iterum resurrexit. Non 
ambularet, nisi crederet, sed nec mergeretur, nisi dubitaret. In Petro 
itaque communis omnium nostrum consideranda conditio, ut si nos in 
aliquo tenfationum ventus conatur subvertere, vel unda submergere, 
ciamemus ad Christum. Cf. He Cant. Novo, z. ’ 


THE WALKING ON THE SEA. 


301 


would be more literally rendered, ^ they were willing to re* 
ceive Him into the ship ; ’ but witH tbe implicit understand¬ 
ing that wbat tbey were willing to do, they actually did. 
Those who a little before were terrified and dreaded his 
approach, as though it had been a spirit, were now glad ^ 
to receive Him in their niidst,^ and did so receive Him; 

^ Grotius: Non quod non receperunt, sed quod cupide admodum, ut 
Syrus iudicat. 

^ Our Translators would have done better if, following the earlier 
English Versions, they had so rendered t]8i\Qv Xa^hXv avrdv. Probably 
to Beza’s influence we owe the change. For voluerunt recipere eum of 
the Vulgate he substitutes volente animo receperunt eum, and defends 
the translation thus; Itaqueverbum opponitur ei quod ante dixerat, 

eos videlicet fuisse perterritos: ex quo intelligitur ipsos initio fuisse 
eum aversatos, nunc vero agnita ejus voce et mutatis animis eum 
quern fugiebant, cupide accepisse in navem. This is perfectly true; yet 
had the passage been left, ‘ the^ loere willing to receive Him^ none reading 
this Gospel of St. John in the light of the other two, could doubt that 
this willingness, which, now when they recognized their Master, they 
felt, issued in the actual receiving of Him: and none could accuse our 
Translators of going out of their way to produce a harmony, which in 
the original did not so evidently exist. That 8i\iiv means often to wish 
to do a thing and to do it, hardly needs proof. Thus Matt, xviii. 23, a 
king desired to take account ovvdpai Xoyov) with his servants, 

and, as we know from the sequel, did so j again, John i. 43, Jesus desired 
to go forth into Galilee (p' kXriaev t^eXOuv), and, as we learn ii. 2, actually 
went; the Scribes desire to walk in long robes (Mark xii. 38! and do so. 
The word may quite as well imply an accomplished, as a baulked, desire 
(cf. Luke XX. 46 ; i Cor. x. 27 ; Col. ii. 8). It is true that we have an 
imperfect, the tense oftentimes of uncompleted action, here; yet consider¬ 
ing the words which directly follow, ‘ and immediately the ship was at the 
land whither they wenti and the impossibility that St. John can mean 
that this desire of theirs was defeated by the instantaneous arrival of the 
ship at the land, or that he can intend to ascribe that arrival to any other 
cause except to the fact that Christ was now in the ship, we may safely 
put back any argument which should be derived from the use of the 
imperfect here. It is of this passage that a recent assailant of the 
credibility of our Gospels has written, ‘By the irreconcilable contradiction 
between John and the synoptic Evangelists in the matter of receiving 
Christ into the ship, one or other account must be given up.’ To be 
sure he does his best to make a contradiction, if he cannot find one; affirm¬ 
ing that Kai in the second clause of ver. 21 must be taken adversativh^ 
—‘ they were willing to receive Him into the ship, hut straightway the 
ship was at the land; ’ and He Wette, Aher alsbald war das Schiff am 
Lande. Ewald in like manner sees in St. John a rectification, and not a 
confirmation, of the account given by the earlier Evangelists; but Baum- 
*ein, one of the latest commentators on St. John, and one troubled with 


302 THE WALKING ON THE SEA. 

^ and immediately the ship was at the land whither they 
went.* ^ 

St. Mark, as is so often kis wont (cf. ii. 12; v. 42 ; vii. 
37; ix. 15), describes to ns bow this and all wbicb tbej bad 
witnessed called forth tbe infinite astonisbment of bis dis¬ 
ciples : ‘ they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, 
and wondered while from St. Matthew we learn that tbe ‘ 
impression was not confined to them alone; but ‘ they that 
were in the ship* others who were sailing with them, 
sailors and passengers,^ cangbt a momentary glimpse of 
the greatness of Him in whose presence they stood; and 
‘ came and worshipped Him, saying. Of a truth Thou art the 
Son of God ’(cf. John i. 49). They felt more or less clearly 
that here was One who must stand in wonderful relation 
with Him of whom it is written, ‘ Thy way is in the sea, 
and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are 
not known’ (Ps. Ixxvii. 19); ^Thon didst walk through 
the sea with thine horses, through the heap of great 
waters’ (Hah. hi. 15)5 ‘Which alone spreadeth out the 
heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea ’ (Job 
ix. 8 3 ). 

no particular anxiety to make tlie Evangelists agvee togetker, rightly: 
Pass ti’Qfojg. tyivtTo kiri rrjg yijg als Folge seines Einsteigens, ist wohl 
nicht zu hezweifeln. 

^ KaJ b)dtiyT]rr 6 i> avrovg t 7 ri Xt/unm QkXfjfinroc avriZv are the beautiful 
\sords with which that which may he called an Old Testament prophecy 
of this scene concludes (Ps. cvii. 23-30). 

^ Jeronie: NautJ© atque vectores. 

* 'O TTkpnraTwv, wc stt’ eSd ovg, tni PaXciarrrjg. Eusebius (Le?n, Evariff. ix. 
17 .) finds a special fulfilment of these words in this miracle, as also in 
these waves the symbol of a mightier and wilder sea, even that of sin 
‘and death, which Christ trod under his feet when He, in a far hio'her 
sense than that in which the words were first spoken, 

.... metus omnes et inexorabile fatum 

Suljccit pedihus, strepitumque Acherontis avari ; 

and he quotes Ps. Ixxiv. 13, 14: ^Thou didst divide the sea by thy 
strength, Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters; Thou 
brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest them to be meat to 
the people inhabiting the wilderness;’ and Job xxxviii. 16, 17 where 
the Almighty says to man : 'Hast thou entered into the springs of the 


THE WALKING ON THE SEA. 


303 


It is a docetic ^ view of tlie person of Christ, which con¬ 
ceives of his body as permanently exempt from the law of 
gravitation, and in this way explains the miracle; a hard 
and mechanical view, which places the seat of the miracle 
in the waters rendered solid under his feet. Rather was it 
the will of Christ, which bore Him triumphantly above those 
waters; even as it was the will of Peter, that will, indeed, 
made in the highest degree active and potential by faith 
on the Son of God, which should in like manner have 
enabled him to walk on the great deep, and, though with 
partial and transient failure, did so enable him. It has 
been already urged^ that the miracle, according to its true 
idea, is not the suspension, still less the violation of law, 
but the incoming of a higher law, as of a spiritual in the 
midst of natural laws ; and so far as its range and reach 
extend, the assertion for that higher law, of the predomi¬ 
nance which it was intended to have, and but for man’s 
fall it would always have had, over the lower; and with 
this a prophetic anticipation of the abiding predominance 
which it shall one day recover. Exactly thus was there 
here a sign of the lordship of man’s will, when that will is 
in absolute harmony with God’s will, over external nature. 
In regard of this very law of gravitation, a feeble remnant 
of his power, and one for the most part unconsciously 
possessed, survives to man in the unquestionable fact that 
his body is lighter when he is awake than sleeping; ® a 
fact which every nurse who has carried a child can attest. 
From this we conclude that the human consciousness, as 
an inner centre, works as an opposing force to the attraction 

sea ? or bast thou walked in the search of the depth ? Have the gates 
of death been opened unto theoj and hast thou seen the doors of the 
shadow of death ? ’ that is, ‘ Hast thou done this, as I have done ? ’ 

1 The Cathari, a Gnostic sect of the Middle Ages, actually appealed to 
this miracle in confirmation of their errors concerning the body of Christ, 
as a heavenly, and not a truly human, body (Neander, Kirch. Gesch. 
vol. v. p. 1126). 

* See pp. i7> 7^- 

* It was noticed long ago by Pliny, H.N. vii. 18. 


304 


THE WALKING ON THE SEA, 


of the earth and the centripetal force of gravity, however 
unable in this present time to overbear itd 

* Prudentius {Apotheosis^ 655) lias some sounding lines upon this 
miracle: 

Ipse super fluidas plantis nitentibus undas 
Atnbulat, ac presso firmat vestigia fluctu; 

Increpat ipse notes, et flatibus otia mandat; 

Ninguidus agnoscit Boreas atque imbrifer Eurus 
Nimborum dominum, teinpestatumque potentem, 
ilxcitamque hyemem verrunt ridente sereno. 


.S THE OPENING OF THE EYES OF ONE BOEN BLIND. 
John ix. 

I T is on the whole most probable that this work of grace 
and power crowned the day of that long debate with 
Jewish adversaries, which, beginning at John vii. 34, 
reaches to the end of chapter x.;—the history of the 
woman taken in adultery being only an interruption, and 
an intercalation easily betraying itself as such. Our Lord 
then^ as He was passing from the temple, to escape those 
stones which were the last arguments of his foes (viii. 59), 
will have paused—probably in the immediate neighbour¬ 
hood of the temple, where beggars, cripples, and other 
afflicted persons took their station (Acts iii. i, 2), to 
accomplish this miracle. Hothing in the narrative in¬ 
dicates a break. That long ‘ contradiction of sinners ’ 
which the Lord endured found place, we know, on a 
Sabbath, for the last day of the feast of tabernacles (vii. 37) 
was always such; and on a Sabbath, to all appearance the 
same Sabbath, He opened this blind man’s eyes (ix. 14). 
Moved by these reasons, the ancient interpreters see here 
a narrative continuous and unbroken, and with them most 
of the modern consent.* 

It has been by some objected, that, first concealing 
Himself, and then escaping for his life. He must have left 
the temple alone; here, on the contrary, his disciples are 
with Him. But what more natural than that they also 
should have extricated themselves, though not in the same 
wonderful manner as He did, from the tumult of the 
^ As Maldonatus, Tittmann, Tlioluck, Oleliausen. 


506 the opening of THE EYES 

people, and have rejoined their Master without ? If it be 
further urged that this work was wrought in a more 
leisurely manner, with more apparent freedom from all 
fear of interruption than could well have been, had He 
only just withdrawn from the extreme malice of his foes, 
we may rather accept this circumstance as a beautiful 
evidence of his fearless walk in the midst of his foes ; so 
that not even such a time as this, when He had hardly 
escaped the Jewish stones, seemed to Him unfitted for a 
task of mercy and love. And may not something of all 
this lie in ver. 4, 5 ? ^ I must work this work now, 

however out of season it may seem : for the night, which 
my enemies are bringing on, is near, and then the oppor¬ 
tunity for working will be over; ’ with which words we 
may compare the exactly parallel passage, John xi. 7-10. 

Some have made a difS.culty, How could the disciples 
know of this man that he ^ was blind from his birth ’ ? * He 
was evidently a well-known beggar in Jerusalem, with 
whose tale many were acquainted (ver. 8); he may further 
have himself proclaimed his lifelong calamity, with the 
object of stirring pity in the passers by. One way or 
other the fact had come to the knowledge of the disciples, 
and out of it their question grew. Perplexed at this more 
than ordinary calamity, they ask their Master to explain 
to them its cause : ‘ Who did sin, this man, or his parents, 
that he was born blind ? ’ But what they could have had 
in their minds when they suggested the former alternative, 
how they could have supposed it possible that for his own 
sins the man had been born blind, has naturally enough 
been often demanded. 

Three or four explanations have been offered ; the first, 
that the Jews believed in a transmigration of souls ; and 
thus that the sins which the disciples assumed as possible 
causes of his blindness, were those of some anterior life,— 

* ’Ek y£veTrjg=iK KoiXlag ixrjrpogf Acts ill. 2. j xiv. 8, 'I'liere, ofi liero, a 
lifelong defect is romoy'ed. 


OF ONE BORN BLIND. 


307 


antenatal sins, whicli were being pnnisbed and expiated 
now. This, as is well known, is the doctrine of the 
Buddhists; and is woven into the very heart of their 
religions system: hut it cannot he proved that there was 
any such belief among the Jews. It may have been the 
dream of a few philosophic Jews, who had obtained some 
acquaintance with the speculations of the East, brft was 
never the faith of plain and simple men. This explanation 
therefore may be regarded as altogether antiquated, and 
not worthy even to be considered.* 

Lightfoot adduces passages to show that the Jews be¬ 
lieved a child might sin in its mother’s womb, in proof of 
which their Eabbis referred to the struggle between Jacob 
and Esau (Gen. xxv. 22); and he, and others after him, 
think that out of this popular belief the question of the 
disciples grew. 

Tholuck, following an earlier interpreter, supposes their 
notion to have been that God had foreknown some great 
sin which this man would commit, and so by anticipation 
had punished him. But as such a dealing on God’s part 
is altogether without analogy in Scripture, so is there not 
the slightest hint that men had ever fallen on it as an ex¬ 
planation of the suffering in the world; nor, indeed, could 
they: for while the idea of retribution is one ot the deep¬ 
est in the human heart, this of punishment running before 
the crime which it punishes, is one from which it as wholly 
revolts. 

Chrysostom imagines that it was upon their part a re- 
ductio ad ahsurdum of the argument which connected sin 
and suffering together. The man could not have brought 
this penalty on himself; for he was born with it. His 
parents could not by their sin have brought it on him; for 
we know that each man shall bear his own burden, that 
the children’s teeth are not set on edge because the parents 

1 The passages from the Wisdom of Solomon (viii. 19, 20) and Josephus 
^B. J. ii. 8, 14) are misunderstood, when applied in this sense, 

14 


THE OPENING OF THE EYES 


308 

ate sour grapes. But this is very artificial, and with little 
of likelihood in it. Honest and simple-hearted men, like 
those who asked the question here, would have been 
the last to try and escape a truth, to which the deepest 
things in their own hearts bore witness, by an ingenious 
dilemma. 

Eather, I believe they did not see, at the moment when 
they put the question, the self-contradiction, so far at least 
as words go, which was involved in the first alternative 
which they put before their Lord; so that, while they 
rightly, and by a most true moral instinct, discerned the 
intimate connexion in which the sin and suffering of the 
world stand to one another, yet in this case they did not 
realize how it must have been the sin and suffering, not of 
this individual man, but of him as making part of a great 
whole, which were thus connected together. They did not 
at the moment perceive that the mere fact of this calamity 
reaching back to his birth at once excluded and condemned 
the uncharitable suspicion, that wherever there was a more 
than ordinary sufferer, there was also a more than ordinary 
sinner,—leaving only the most true thought, that a great 
sin must be cleaving to a race, of which any member could 
so greatly suffer. 

This, as it is continually affirmed in Scripture, so we can¬ 
not suppose that our Lord intended to deny it. His words, 
‘Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents ,’—words 
which need for their completion —‘ that he should have 
been born blind,’ neither deny the man’s own sin nor that of 
his parents; and as little that sicknesses are oftentimes 
the punishment of sins (Dent, xxviii. 22; Lev. xxvi. 16; i 
I Cor. xi. 30); or that the sins of parents are often visited 
on their children (Exod. xx. 5). All that He does is to 
check in his disciples that most harmful practice of diving 
down with cruel surmises into the secrets of other men’s 
lives, and, like the friends of Job, ascribing to them great, 
though it might be from men concealed transgressions, in 



OF ONE BORN BLIND. 


309 


explanation of their unusual sufferings (Job. iv. 7; viii. 6). 
This blindness, He would saj, is the chastening of no 
peculiar sin on his own part, nor on his parents’. Seek, 
therefore, its cause neither here nor there; but see what 
nobler explanation the evil in the world, and this evil in 
particular, is capable of receiving. The purpose of the 
lifelong blind»ness of this man is ^that the works of God 
should he made mamfest in him; ’ that through it and its 
removal the grace and glory of God might be magnified. 
Not, indeed, as though this man had been used merely as 
a means, visited with this blindness to the end that the 
power of God in Christ might be manifested to others in 
its removal.^ The manifestation of the works of God has 
here a wider reach, and embraces in it the lasting weal of 
the man himself; it includes, indeed, the manifestation of 
those works to the world and on the man ; but it does not 
exclude, rather of necessity includes, their manifestation 
also to him and in him. It entered into the plan of God 
for the bringing of this man to the light of everlasting 
life, that he should thus for a while be dark outwardly; 
that so at once upon this night, and upon the night of his 
heart, a higher light might break, and the Sun of right¬ 
eousness arise on him, with healing in his wings for all his 
bodily and all his spiritual infirmities; which, but for that 
long night of darkness and sorrow, might have never been : 
while again this was part of a larger whole, and fitted in, 
according to his eternal counsels, to the great scheme for 
the revelation of the glory and power of the Only-be¬ 
gotten to the world (cf. John xi. 4; Eom. v. 20; ix. 17; 
xi. 25> 32> 33)-^ 

Yet, while it was thus, we are not to accept this as the 
entire and exhaustive solution of this man’s blindness. For 
it is the pantheistic explanation of evil, that it is not really 

1 Leo the Great {Serm. 45) : Quod principiis naturae non dederat, ad 
manifestationem suae gloriae reservarat. 

* Compare Jeremy Taylor, Life of Christ, part 3, sect. 14 j disc. 18. 


310 


THE OPENING OF THE EYES 


evil, but onlj tbe condition of, and tbe transition to, a 
higher good; only appearing, indeed, as evil at all from a 
low standing point, and one which not as yet beholds the 
end. But this explanation of the world’s evil, tempting . 
as it has ever shown itself, so tempting that multitudes 
have been unable to resist its attraction, is not that which 
the Scriptures offer. They ever recognize' the reality of 
evil; and this, even while that evil, through the boundless 
resources of the Divine love, magnifies more the glory of 
the Creator, and ultimately exalts higher the blessedness 
of the creature. This cannot, then, be the whole explana¬ 
tion of the blindness which this man had brought with him 
into the world; but God, who though not the author, is 
yet the disposer, of evil,—who distributes that which He 
did not Himself bring in, and distributes it according to 
the counsels of his wisdom and righteousness and grace, 
had willed that on this man should be concentrated more 
than the ordinary penalties of the world’s universal sin, 
that a more than ordinary grace and glory might be re 
vealed in their removing. 

With this the Lord girds up Himself to the work which 
is before Him, and justifies Himself in undertaking it: ‘ / 
must worh the worlcs of Him that sent Me,^ while it is day ; 
the night cometh, when no man can worh^ (cf. xi. 9, 10). 
Whatever perils attended thab work, yet it must be accom¬ 
plished ; for his- time, ^ the day ’ of his open activity, of 
his walking up and down among the people, and doing 
them good, was drawing to an end. ‘ The night,’ when 
He should no longer lighten the world with his presence, 
nor have the opportunity of doing, with his own hands at : 
least, works like these, was approaching. He worked in 
the day, and was Himself the light of the day. The image 
is borrowed from our common day and our common night, 
of which the first is the time appointed for labour, ‘ man 

* This was a favourite passage with the Arians; see Augustine, Ser?n. 
cxxxv. 1-4, and his answer there to their abusive interpretation. 


OF ONE BORN BLIND, 


goetli fertli to his work until the evening ’ (Ps. civ. 23); 
while the latter, by its darkness, opposes to many kinds 
of labour obstacles insurmountable. The difficulty which 
Olshausen finds in the words, ‘ when no man can worh,^ in¬ 
asmuch as, however Christ was Himself withdrawn from 
the earth, yet his disciples did effectually work,^ rises 
solely from his missing the point of the proverbial phrase. 
Our Lord does not affirm ‘ The night cometh, in which no 
other man can work; in which no work can be done; ’ but 
only, in the language of a familiar proverb which is as 
true for the heavenly kingdom as for this present world, 
‘ Ho man who has not done his work in the day, can do it 
in the night; for him the time cometh in which he cannot 
work; ’ and He does not exclude even Himself from this 
law.^ And then, with prophetic allusion to the work be¬ 
fore Him, ‘As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the 
worldy what work then will become Me better than this.of 
opening the blind eyes ? where should I find so fit a sym¬ 
bol of my greater spiritual work, the restoring of the 
darkened spiritual vision of mankind 9 ’ ® 

And now He who at the old creation had said, Let there 
be light and there was light (Gen.'i. 3), will in this, a little 
fragmentary specimen of the new creation, display the 
same almighty power. ‘ When He had thus spohen, He spat 
on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and He anointed the 
eyes of the blind man with the clay I A medicinal value was 
attributed in old time to saliva, above all for disorders in 

1 The same difficulty strikes Augustine: Numquid nox erat, quando 
claudi'ts ille ad verbum Petri salvus effectus est, immo ad verbum Domini 
habitantis in Petro ? Numquid nox erat, quando transeuntibus disci- 
puiis segii cum lectulis ponebantur, ut vel umbra transeuntium tange- 
rentur ? 

^ The power of triviality can reach no further than it has reached in 
the exposition of Paulus. Christ is for him no more than a skilful oculist, 
who says, ‘ I must take this cure in hand while there is yet daylight to 
eeej for when it is dark I could not attempt so fine and delicate an 
operation/ 

• So Cyril; '^Tniirtp a(fiy}iai rd tV Stl fi€ Kai Toli 

Tov aiojxarog to fCjs ptracovvai. 


312 


THE OPENING OF THE EYES 


the ejes; Mt is similarlj used in the case of another 
blind man (Mark viii. 23), and of one suffering from a 
defect in the organs of speech and hearing (Mark vii. 33) ; 
neither are we altogether without examples of a medicinal 
use of clay.* Still we must not suppose that, besides his 
divine power, the Lord also used natural remedies, or that 
these were more than conductors, not in themselves 
needful, but such as of his own free will He assumed, as 
channels to convey his grace (cf. 2 Kin. iv. 41 ; Isai. 
xxxviii. 21) ; for other blind eyes He opened without em¬ 
ploying any such means (Matt. xx. 30-34). Probably the 
reasons which indue edtheir use were ethical. It may have 
been a help to the weak faith of this man to find that 
something external was done. Kor may we leave out of 
sight a symbolic reference to Gen. ii. 7. The same creative 
hand which wrought at the beginning is again at work.^ 

^ Pliny (if. N. xxviii. 7) says, Lippitudines matutina quotidie velut 
inunctione arceri. In both accounts (Suetonius, Vespas. 7; Tacitus, 
Hist. iv. 8) of that restoring of a blind man to sight, attributed to Vespa¬ 
sian, the use of this remedy occurs. In the latter the man begs of the 
emperor, ut genas et oculorum orbes dignaretur respergere oris excre- 
mento; and abundant quotations to the same effect are to be found in 
Wetstein (in loc.). 

^ Thus Serenus Samonicus, a physician in the time of CaracaUa: 

Si tumor insolitus typho se tollat inani, 

Turgentes oculos vili circumline coeno. 

In this healing by clay, being as it is that very thing which (in the shape 
of dust) most often afflicts and wounds the eyes, Augustine (In Ev. Joh. 
tract, ii.) finds a striking analogy with the healing of flesh through flesh, 
our flesh through Christ’s flesh : Gloriam ejus nemo posset videre, nisi 
carnis humilitate sanaretur. Unde non poteramus videre? Irruerat 
homini quasi pulvis in oculum, irruerat terra, sauciaverat oculum, videre 
non poterat lucem: oculus ille sauciatus inunguitur; terra sauciatus erat, 
et terra illuc mittitur, ut sanetur. . . . De pulvere caecatus es, de pulvere 
sanaris: ergo caro te caecaverat, caro te sanat. 

® Irenaeus has here one of his profound observations. Ilavino- refeiTed 
to ver. 3, ‘ that the works of God should be made manifest in him,’ he 
goes on to say (v. 15): Scriptura ait, Sumsit Deus limum de terra, et 
plasmavit hominem. Quapropter et Dominus exspuit in terram, et fecit 
lutum, et superlinivit illud oculis; ostendens antiquam plasmationem 
quemadmodum facta est, et manum I)ei manifestans his qui intelligere 
possint, per quam e limo plasmatus est homo. Compare Prudentiua 


OF ONE BORN BLIND. 3^3 


The command, ‘ Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, was 
certainly something more than a mere test of obedience. 
Was the cure itself to result, altogether, or in part, from 
that washing ? Or was the tempered clay the sole agent 
of healing, and the washing merely designed to remove 
the hindrances which the remedy itself, if suffered to 
remain, would have opposed even to the restored organs of 
vision? Our answer to these questions must in good 
part depend on the answer we give to another this 
namely. Did St. John see anything significant and mystical 
in the name of the pool, that he should add for his Greek 
readers an interpretation of it, ^ which is by interpretation, 
Sent ’ ? Did he trace any symbolic meaning in Christ’s 
sending of the man to a pool bearing such a name ? If so, 
one can scarcely doubt that it was his intention to connect 
the actual cure with the washing in that pool. But how 
can we suppose that St. John did not see a prophetic 
significance in the name ^ Siloam,’ or that, except for this, 
he would have paused to, insert in his narrative the deriva¬ 
tion of the word ? (cf. i. 38, 42); which, proper enough in 
a lexicon, would have been quite out of place in a gospel. 
Those who admit this much, yet differ among themselves 
as to wbat the exact allusion may be. Olshausen cannot 
find in ‘ Sent’ a reference to Christ Himself, seeing that 
He was not upon this occasion the " Sent,’ but the Sender. 
There seems to me no force in the objection. Christ, 
the Sender indeed in this particular instance, was the Sent 
of God, when we contemplate his work as a whole so He 
{Apotheosis, 689), who gives the same reason for the employment of the 


Norat enim limo sese informasse figiiram 
Ante tenebrosam, proprii medicamen et oris 
Adjecisse novo, quern primum finxerat, Aase ; 
Nam sine divino Domini perflamine summi 
Arida terra fuit, nulli prius apta medelse. 


. Augustine (&rm. cxxxt. i): “I'" 1“ 

tps& lectione, Egu, inquit, xeni ut faciam opera ejus qiu me; and /n 

£v Joh. tract, xlix.: Misit ilium ad piscinam quffi Tocatur Siloe._ ler- 
tinuit autem ad Evangeiistam eommendare nobis nomcn hujus p,scma 3 , 


THE OPENING OF THE EYES 


3H 

ever contemplated it Himself (John iii. 17, 34 j "v* 3 ^? 3 ^ 5 
vii. 29; viii. 42); bearing therefore this very title, ‘ the 
Apostle^ of our profession’ (Heb. iii. i). These waters of 
Siloam, in which the blind man washed and was illumi¬ 
nated, may well have been to St. John a type of the waters 
of^baptism (cf. i Pet. iii. 21), or indeed of all the opera¬ 
tions of grace by which the eyes spiritually blind are 
opened; the very name of the pool having therefore for 
him a presaging fitness, which by this notice he would 
indicate as more than accidental.^ 

The man is no Haaman, resenting the simplicity of the 
means by which his cure should be effected, and hardly 
persuaded to be healed (2 Kin. v. ii, 13). He at once 
fulfilled the conditions imposed: ^ he went his way there¬ 
fore, and washed, and came seeing ; ’ returned, as it seems, 
to his own house ; it does not appear that he came back to 
the Lord. His neighbours and those who were familiar 
with the former mode of his life are the first who take note 
of the cure which has been wrought 5—well-disposed 
persons, as would appear, but altogether under the influ¬ 
ence of the Pharisees. They wonder, debate whether it be 
indeed he whom they had known so long; for the opening 
of the eyes, those windows of the soul, had no doubt altered 
the whole character of the countenance.^ ‘Some said. 
This is he ; others said, He is like him •, ’ these last denying 
the identity, and allowing only a fortuitous resemblance; 

et ait, Quod interpretatur Missus. Jam quis sit Missus agnoscitis: nisi 
enim ille fuisset missus, nemo nostrum esset ab iniquitate dimissus. So 
Chrysostom, Horn. Ivii. in Joh.) and Basil the Great: Tig ovv 6 dirfcrraX- 
fihvog Kai d\}/o:pTjT\ pswr, rj rrepl ov eiptjrai, Kvpiog dirioTaXKe ps • Kal rraXtr, ov 
fplrrfi ovSh Kpavydafi. 

^ 'kiroaroXog, as Compared with dTrf.(rTa\pfvog here. 

2 Bengel: Nomen huic loco inditum pridem, quia Jesus Christus eo 
missurus erat caecum. Compare Tholuck, Beitrdge zur Spracherhldrung des 
Neuen Testaments, p. 123. The pool of Siloam, which received the waters of 
the fountain of the same name, is often mentioned by Josephus; and twice 
in the Old Testament, ‘ the waters of Siloah ’ (Isai. viii. 6), ‘ the pool, of 
Siloah’ (Nehem. iii. 15). See the admirable article, Siloam, in the Diet, 
of the Bihle. 

* Augustine: Aperti oculi vultum mutaverant. 


OF ONE BORN BLIND. 


3^5 


Rnd so tlie debate proceeded, until the man bimself cut it 
short, and ‘ said, I am he.^ They would fain learn how he 
had recovered his sight; ^ and having heard from his lips 
of the wonder-worker who had wrought the cure, and by 
what means He had wrought it, they desire to see Him, 
and demand where He wiU be found. The man is unable 
to tell them. In the end, as the safest course, and per¬ 
haps having some misgivings about a work wrought upon 
the Sabbath, they bring him, although with no evil dis¬ 
positions either towards him or towards Christ, to their 
spiritual rulers,—not, that is, before the great Sanhedrim, 
for that was not always sitting, but the lesser,—^ to the 
Pharisees.^ The Sanhedrim, it is true, did not exclusively 
consist of these (for Caiaphas was a Sadducee, and see 
Acts xxiii. 6), but these were the most numerous and 
influential party there, and the bitterest enemies of the 
Lord. 

More formally examined by them, the man can only 
repeat his simple tale: ‘He put clay upon mine eyes, and I 
washed, and do see.’ Very characteristically he speaks of 
the clay only, for that only came within the scope of his 
knowledge, who judged by the feeling alone; how the clay 
had been tempered he was ignorant. Already there is a 
certain curtness in his reply, reduced as it is to the fewest 
possible words, as contrasted with the greater particularity 
of his first explanation (seever. ii). And now the Phari¬ 
sees discuss the matter among themselves. Some seek to 
rob the deed of its significance by a charge against the 
doer: ‘ This man is not of God, because He heepeth not the 
Sabbath day.^ Granting then its reality, it proved nothing 
in favour of Him that wrought it; rather was it to be 
inferred, since He was thus an evident transgressor of 
God’s commandment, that He was in connexion with the 
powers of evil. No lighter charge than that which they 

' As much, is implied in the avsfixcipa of ver. ii, on which Bengel 
wdl: Aiitea non habuerat videndi facultatem; sed ea tamen honiini 
naturalis est j ideo dicit, Recepi yisuni. 


3 i6 the opening of the eyes 

made at another time, when they said, ^ He casteth out 
devils through the prince of the devils’ (Matt. ix. 34), was 
involved in this word of theirs. 

But there was throughout all these events, which were 
so disastrously fixing the fortunes of the Jewish people, 
an honester and better party in the Sanhedrim, of which 
Mcodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were the noblest 
representatives; men like the Poles and Contarinis at 
another great epoch of the Church; not in number, 
perhaps still less in courage, equal to the stemming of the 
fierce tide of hostility which was rising against the truth, 
—a tide which probably in the end drew most even of 
them into its current (cf. John xii. 42, 43); only here and 
there one and another, such as those above named, extri¬ 
cating themselves from it. These from time to time made 
their voices to be heard in the cause of righteousness and 
truth. Thus, on the present occasion, they claim that He 
should not at once be prejudged a sinner and a breaker of 
God’s law, who had done such miracles as these (cf. x. 
19-21). Even their own Doctors were not altogether at 
one concerning what was. permitted on the Sabbath, and 
what not; some allowing quite as much as this which 
Christ had done and more, for only the alleviation of 
disorders in the eyes. They could therefore plead that 
the Spirit of God might well have directed Him in this 
that He did, and they ask, ^How can a man that is a sinner 
do such miracles ?’ Yet the shape which their interference 
takes, the form of a question in which it clothes itself, 
betrays, as Chrysostom remarks, the timidity of men, 
who do not dare more than to hint their convictions. 
Ho wonder that they should be in the end overborne and 
silenced by their more unscrupulous adversaries, even as 
now they prove unequal to the obtaining of a fair and im¬ 
partial hearing of the matter. 

The interrogation in the verse following, ‘ What sayest 
thou of Him, that He hath opened thine eyes?^ has been fre- 


OF ONE BORN BLIND. 


3*7 


^uently, but wronglj, understood, not as one question, but 
fts two. The mistake is a very old one, for TTieodore of 
Mopsuestia finds fault with them who divide the question 
here into two clauses, as thus—^ What sayest thou of Him? 
That He hath opened thine eyes making the second clause 
to have its rise in the doubts which the Pharisees felt, or 
pretended to feel, concerning the reality of the miracle. 
In truth there is but one question, ^ What sayest thou of 
Him, hecause^ He hath opened thine eyes ? what conclusion 
drawest thou from thence ? ’ The answer is then to the 
point, ‘ He said, He is a prophet —not yet the Messiah, 
not yet the Son of God; of these higher dignities of his 
benefactor the man as yet has no guess; but what he 
believes Him he boldly declares Him, ^ a prophetf —one 
furnished with a message from above, and attesting that 
message by deeds which no man could do, except God 
were with him (John iii. 2; iv. 19; vi. 14). They who 
asked this, cared not in the least for the judgment of the 
man, but they hoped to mould him into an instrument for 
their own wicked purposes. Chrysostom indeed, whom 
others follow, understands this ‘What sayest thou of Him? ^ 
as the speech of the better-disposed in the Sanhedrim, who 
hope that the testimony of the man himself may go for 
something; but this is little probable. Bather the drift 
of the question is that he, perceiving what would be wel¬ 
come to them, and following the suggestions which they 
had thrown out, should turn against his benefactor, and 
ascribe the opening of his eyes to the power of au evil 
magic. But a rare courage from above is given to him, 
and he dares, in the face of these formidable men whom 
he is making his foes, to avouch his belief that the work 
and the doer of the work were of God. 

^ "Ori — virlo o)V. 

^ Our Version no doubt in general conveys to tbe English reader the 
wrong impression. Yet the manner of pointing, with the absence of the 
second note of interrogation, shows that the Translators had rightly ap* 
prehended the passage. 


THE OPENING OF THE EYES 


318 

The' innuisitors now summon his parents, hoping to 
tamper more snccessfullj with them, to win a lie from them, 
a declaration that their son had not been born blind. But 
they prosper no better in this quarter. His parents reply 
as those who will not be made accomplices in a fraud, though 
with no very high deshe to witness or to suffer for the truth. 
Nay, there is something selfish, and almost cowardly, in 
their manner of extricating themselves from a danger in 
which they are content to leave their son. The questions put 
to them are three: ^Is this your son ?’—‘ Who ye say was horn 
blind ?’ —^ How then doth he now see ?’ The first two they 
answer in the affirmative : ‘ This is our son ’—‘ He was 
horn blind ’—the third they altogether decline— ‘By what 
means he now seeth, we know not; or who hath opened his 
eyes, we know not: he is of age ; ask him: he shall speak for 
himself,’ They could not have told the truth without 
saying something to the honour of Jesus; and they will 
not do this, fearing to come under the penalties which the 
Sanhedrim had lately pronounced against any that should 
‘confess that He was Christ,’ We are not to understand by 
this that the Sanhedrim had formally declared Jesus to be 
an impostor, a false Christ, but only that, so long as the 
question of the truth or falsehood of his claims to be the 
Messiah was not yet clear,—and they, the great religious 
tribunal of the nation, had not given their decision,—none 
were to anticipate that decision; and any who should thus 
run before, or, as it might prove, run counter to, their 
decision, ‘ should he put out of the synagogue is, 
should be excommunicated. There were two, or as some 
say three, kinds of excommunication among the Jews, 
greatly differing in degrees and intensity; and Christ often 
speaks of them, as among the sharpest trials which his 
followers would have to endure for his name’s sake (John 
xvi. 2). The mildest form was exclusion for thirty days 
from the synagogue. To this period, in case the excom¬ 
municated showed no sign of repentance, a similar or a 


OF ONE BORN BLIND. 


319 


longer period, according to the will of those that imposed 
the sentence, was added: in other ways too it was made 
sharper; it was accompanied with a curse; none might 
hold communion with him now, not even his family, 
except in cases of absolute necessity. Did the offender 
show himself obstinate stiU, he was in the end absolutely 
separated from the fellowship of the people of God, cut off 
from the congregation,—a sentence answering, as many 
suppose, to the delivering to Satan in the apostolic Church^ 
(i Cor. V. 5 ; I Tim. i. 20). 

The man had been removed, while his parents were ex¬ 
amined. The Pharisees now summon him again, and evi¬ 
dently would have him to believe that they had gotten to 
the bottom of all; that others had confessed, that for him 
therefore to stand out any longer in denial was idle, and 
would only make matters worse in the end. ‘Now we 
know,’ they would say, ‘ that it is all a collusion; we have 
indubitable proofs of it; do thou also give glory to God, 
and acknowledge that it is so.’ Our ‘ Give God the praise ’ 
sets the English reader on a wrong track. The Pharisees 
do not mean, ‘ Give the glory of thy cure to God, and not 
to this sinful man, who in truth could have contributed 
nothing to it,’—attempting, in Hammond’s word, ‘ to draw 
him from that opinion of Christ which he seemed to have, 
by bidding him to ascribe the praise of his cure wholly to 
God, and not to look on Christ with any veneration.’ So 
too Jeremy Taylor: ‘The spiteful Pharisees bid him give 
glory to God, and defy the minister; for God indeed was 
good, but He wrought that cure by a wicked hand.’ But 
they could not mean this; who did not allow that any 
cure had taken place at all; professed on the contrary to 

» Our Lord is tliought to refer to all these three degrees of separation, 
Luke vi. expressing the lightest by the d<popi^Hv^ the severer by the 
ovu^iKnv, and the severest of all by the tK(3a\\siv. But it may well be 
doubtful whether these different grades of excommunication were so ac« 
curateJy distinguished in his time (see Winer, Realworterbuch, s. v. Bann 
Vitringa, De Synagogd, p. 738). 


320 


THE OPENING OF THE EYES 


believe fcliat the alleged healing was a fraud and conspiracy 
throughout, contrived between Christ and the man who 
was before them. The words are rather an adjuration to 
him that he should speak the truth ^ (cf. Josh. vii. 19 ). 
Hitherto he has been acting as though he could deceive 
not merely men but God, but now let him honour or ‘give 
glory ^io God, uttering that which is truth before Him, and 
avouching so his belief in Him as a God of knowledge, of 
righteousness, and of truth; whom no lie will escape, and 
who will show Himself a swift witness against all ungodli¬ 
ness of men.® ‘ We know that this man is a sinner, a more 
than ordinary transgressor, one, therefore, to whom last 
and least of all would God have given this higher power ; 
your story then cannot be true; we who have the best 
opportunities of knowing, know this.’ They will overbear 
him with the authority of their place and station, and 
with their confident assertion. 

The man, whom we must recognize throughout as 
ready-witted, genial, and brave, declines altogether to 
enter on a question which was plainly beyond his know¬ 
ledge ; ‘ Whether He he a sinner or no, I know not ; ’ yet, as 
Chrysostom observes, not in the least allowing the alter¬ 
native that He was so. This is a matter which he knows 
not; he will speak, however, the thing which he does 
know, and they may draw their own conclusions; ‘ One 
thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I seel They 
perceive that they can gain nothing in this way, and they 
require him to tell over again the manner of his cure; 

^ The phrase is often an adjuration to repentance in general, which is 
in the highest sense a taking shame to ourselves, and in that a giving 
of glory to God (i Sam. vi. 5; Jer. xhi. 16; i Esdr. ix. 8 ; Eev. xvi. 9). 
Seneca {Ep. 95) speaks very nobly of this giving glory to God, as the 
great work of every man: Primus est Deorum cultus, Deos credere: 
deinde reddere Hits majestatem mam, reddere bonitatem, sine qua nulla 
majestas est. 

* Beza; Cogita te coram Deo esse, qui rem totam novit. Eeverere 
igitur ipsius majestatem, et hunc illi honorem babe, nt palam fateri rem 
totam mails, quam coram eo mentiri. 


OF ONE BORN BLIND. 


321 


The)i said they to him again, What did He to thee ? hoiu 
opened He thine eyes ? ’ hoping either to detect on a second 
repetition some contradictions in his story, or to find 
something which they can better lay hold on, and wrest 
into a charge against the Lord; or perhaps, utterly per¬ 
plexed how to escape from their present entanglement, 
they ask for this repetition to gain time, and in the hope 
that some light may break upon them presently. 

But the man has grown weary of the examinations to 
which they are submitting him anew, and there is some¬ 
thing of defiance in his answer : ' I have told you already, 
and ye did not hear: wherefore would ye hear it again ? ’— 
and then, with an evident irony, ‘ Will ye also ^ he his dis¬ 
ciples ? ’ It is clear that these words cut them to the 
quick, though it is not so clear what exactly is the taunt 
conveyed by them. Is it this ? ‘ How idle to tell you 

over again, when there is that deep-rooted enmity in your 
hearts against this man, that, though convinced a hundred 
times, you would yet never acknowledge it, or sit as 
learners at his feet.^ Will ye also become his disciples ? 
[ trow not.’ This is the commonest explanation of the 
words; but does not, however, agree perfectly with their 
reply. In that they earnestly repel the indignity of being, 
or intending to be, disciples of his. Such a disclaimer 
would have been beside the mark, if he, so far from accu¬ 
sing them of any such intention, had on the contrary laid 
to their charge, that no evidence, no force of truth, could 
win them to this. More probably then the man, in this 
last clause of his answer, affects to misunderstand their 
purpose in asking a repetition of his story: ‘ Is it then, 
indeed, that the truth is at length winning you also to its 

1 In this Kai Vfjielc may lie, as Chrysostom sup^gests, a confession that 

was, or intended to he, a follower of this prophet. Bengel: Jucunde 
ohservari potest fides apud himc hominem, dum Pharissei contradicunt, 
pa’dlatira exoriens. 

3 Calvin: Significat, quamvis centies convicti fuerint, maligno hostilique 
ftffectu sic esse occupaios ut nunquam cessuri sinl. 


322 


THE OPENING OF THE EYES 


side, so that you too would fain find my story true, and 
yourselves sit as disciples at this man’s feet ? ’ With this 
the angry rejoinder of the Pharisees will exactly correspond. 
Nothing could have stung them more than the bare sug¬ 
gestion of such a discipleship on their parts : * Then they 

reviled ^ him, and said, Thou art his disciple,^ hut we are 
Moses’ disciples’ —setting, as was their wont, Moses against 
the Lord, and contrasting their claims : ^ we hnow that God 
spahe unto Moses •,’ he had a commission and an authority; 
but ^ as for this fellow, we hnow not from whence He is ; ’ 
all is obscure, uncertain about Him ; there is no proof that 
God has given Him a commission, no one can certainly 
affirm whether He be from above or from beneath. On a 
former occasion their charge against Him had been that 
they knew whence He was (John vii. 27), so impossible is 
it to convince those who are resolved to remain uncon¬ 
vinced. 

This confession that they are at fault, unable to explain 
so new and wonderful an appearance, emboldens the man 
yet further. They had left a blot, and he, quick-witted 
with all his plainness, fails not to take instant advantage 
of it. There is an irony keener yet in his present retort 
than in his last: ‘Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye 
hnow not from whence He is, and yet He hath opened mine 
eyes. This is wonderful; here is one evidently clothed with 
powers mightier than man’s, able to accomplish a work 
like this ; and you, the spiritual rulers of our nation, you 
that should try the spirits, should be able to pronounce of 
each new appearance whether it be of God or not, here 
acknowledge your ignorance, and cannot decide whence He 
is, whether of earth or of heaven.^ Now we hnow, for you 

' Maledixerunt in tlie Latin; on whidi Augustine exclaims: Tale 
maledictum sit super nos, et super filios nostros—this, and not that which 
the Jews desired on themselves (Matt, xxvii. 25). 

* d fiaOijTr'ts iKfivov. Bengel well; Hoc verbo removent Jesum a 
eese. 

Compare our Lord’s question to his adversaries, Matt. xxi. 21;:^ The 


OF ONE BORN BLIND. 


323 


have yourselves declared the same (see ver. 24), that God 
heareth not sinners', but this man He hath heard, and 
enabled Him to do a work without parallel; therefore I 
know whence He is 5 for if this man were not of God, He 
could do nothing ”—being the same conclusion at which 
one of themselves had arrived ’ (John hi. 2). 

It is interesting to observe how rapidly the man’s faith 
and insight and courage have grown during this very ex¬ 
amination. He who had said a little while before, 
^ Whether He he a sinner or no, I Jcnow not,^ evading the 
answer, now declares boldly, ‘ We hnow that God heareth 
not sinners.^ Nor need we take exception, as many have 
taken, at his maxim, nor urge, as they have thought it 
needful to do, that this saying has no scriptural autho¬ 
rity,’ being the utterance neither of Christ nor of one of 

baptism of John ivhence was it (jro^tv i^v)? from heaven or of men?’ 
which best explains the ttoQev (=^iv irolq, i'^ovaiq, ver. 24) here. In the 
same way Pilate’s question to our Lord, ^Whence art Thou ? ’ (John xix. 
9) is to be explained, ^ To what world dost Thou belong ? ’ 

^ Thus Origen {In Bsai. Horn, v.): Peccatores exaudit Deus. Quod si 
timetis illud quod in Evangelic dicitur, Scimus quia peccatores non ex- 
audiat Deus, nolite pertimescere, nolite credere. Csecus erat qui hoc 
dixit. Magis autem credite ei qui dicit, et non mentitur, Etsi fuerint 
peccata vestra ut coccinum, ut lanam dealbabo. But elsewhere rightly 
{Comm, in Rom. v. 18): Aliud est peccare, aliud peccatorem esse. 
Peccator dicitur is, qui multa delinquendo in consuetudinem, et, ut ita 
dicam, in studium peccandi jam venit. Augustine {Senn. cxxxvi.)^ Si 
peccatores Deus non exaudit, quam spem hahemus ? Si peccatores Deus 
non exaudit, ut quid oramus et testimonium peccati nostri tunsione pectoris 
dicimus [Luke xviii. 10] ? Certe peccatores Deus exaudit. Sed ille qui 
ista dixit, nondum laverat faciem cordis de Siloa. In oculis ejus prascesse- 
rat sacramentum: sed in corde nondum erat effectum gratiae beneficium. 
Quando lavit faciem cordis sui Ccecus iste ? Quando eum Dqminus foras 
missum a Judaeis, intromisit ad se. Of. Serm. cxxxv. 5. Elsewhere {Con. 
Lit. Barmen, ii. 8) he shows that his main desire is to rescue the passage 
from the abuse of the Donatists. These last, true to their plan of making 
the sacraments of the Church to rest on the subjective sanctit}’^ of those 
through whose hands they passed, and not on the sure promise of Him 
from whose hands they came, misapplied these words. ‘ God heareth not 
sinnei's;’ how then, they asked, can these minister blessings to others? It 
would be enough to answer that it is not them whom God hears, but the 
Church which speaks through them; nor did it need, because of this 
abuse of the words, to except against the statement itshlf, as smacking of 
errors from which the man was not yet wholly delivered. Calvin better: 


324 


TEE OPENING OF THE EYES 


his inspired servants, but only of a man not wholly en¬ 
lightened yet, in whose mind truth and error were yet 
struggling. That the words have in themselves no autho¬ 
rity is most true ; stiU they may well be allowed to stand, 
and that in the intention of the speaker. For the term 
^ sinner ’ has more than one application in Scripture. 
Sometimes it is applied to all men, as they are the fallen 
guilty children of Adam. Were it true that in this sense 
^God heareth not sinners’ such were a terrible announce¬ 
ment indeed; nothing short of this, God heareth not any 
man; or if by ^ sinners ’ were understood more than ordi¬ 
nary transgressors, and the words implied that such would 
not be heard, though they truly turned, this too would be 
an impeaching of God’s grace. But the Scripture knows 
another and emphatic use of the term ‘ sinners’ —men in 
their sins, and not desiring to be delivered out of them ^ 
(Isai. xxxiii. 14; Gal. ii. 15); and in this, which is the 
sense of the speaker here, as of the better among the 
Pharisees, who a little earlier in the day had asked, ‘ How 
can a man that is a sinner do such miracles ? ’ (ver. 16; cf. 
X. 21), it is most true ‘ that God heareth not sinners ; ’ their 
prayer is an abomination; and even if they ask, they ob¬ 
tain not their petitions ^ (Isai. i. 11-15 ; lix. 1,2; Prov. i. 
28; XV. 8, 29; xxi. 27; xxviii. 9 ; Ps. 1 . 16 ; Ixvi. 18 ; cix. 
7 ; Job xiii. 16 ; xxvii. 9 ; xxxv. 13 ; Jer. xiv. 12 ; Amos 

Falluntur qui csecum ex Tulgi opinione sic loquutiim esse putcant. Nam 
peccator hie qiioque ut paulo ante impium et sceleratum significat (ver. 
24). Est autem haec perpetua Scripturae doctrina, quod Dens non ex- 
audiat nisi a quibus vere et sincere corde vocatiir. .... Ideo non male 
ratiocinatur caecus, Christum a Deo profectum esse, quern suis votis ita 
propitium habet. 

1 Thus Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. cv. 18): Non est hoc nomen [pecca- 
tores] in Scripturis usitatum eorum, qui licet juste ac laudabiliter vivant 
non sunt sine peccato. Magis enim, sicut interest inter irridentes et 
irrisores, inter murmurantes et murmuratores, inter scribentes et scriptores, 
et cetera similia: ita Scriptura peccatores appellare consuevit valde 
iniquos, et grandibus peccatorum sarcinis oneratos. 

^ The words are so true that Jeremy Taylor has made them the text of 
three among his noblest sermons, The return of Prayers, or The conditions 
of a prevailing Prayer. 



OF ONE BOBN BLIND. 325 

V. 21-23 5 Mic. iii. 4; Jam. iv. 3 ); or only obtain tbem 
for tbeir worse confusion in the end. 

This was what least of all the Pharisees could endure, 
that the whole relations between themselves and this man 
should thus be reversed,—that he should thus be their 
teacher; and while it was now plain that he could neither 
be cajoled nor terrihed from his simple yet bold avowal of 
the truth, their hatred and scorn break forth without any 
restraint: ^ Thou wast altogether horn in sins, —not imperfect 
in body only, but, as we now perceive, maimed and deformed 
in soul also, that birth-sin, which is common to all (Ps. li. 
5), assuming far more than a common malignity in thee ’ 
—for so much their words imply—^ and dost thou teach 
us ? ^ Thou that earnest forth from thy mother’s womb 
with the note of thy wickedness upon thee, dost thou 
school us, presuming to meddle and make in such high 
matters as these ? ’ They take the same view of his 
calamity, namely, that it was the note of a more than 
ordinary guilt, which the disciples had suggested; but 
make hateful application of it. Characteristically enough 
they forget that the two charges, one that he had never 
been blind, and so was an impostor,—the other that he 
bore the mark of God’s anger in a blindness which reached 
back to his birth,—will not agree together, but mutually 
exclude one another. ‘And they cast him out,’’ —^which 
does not merely mean, as some explain it (Chrysostom, 
Maldonatus, Grotius, Tholuck), rudely flung him forth from 
the hall of judgment, wherever that may have been ; but, 
according to the decree which had gone before, they de¬ 
clared him to have come under those sharp spiritual cen¬ 
sures denounced against any that should recognize the pro¬ 
phetic ofiice of the Lord (John vii. 13). Only so would the 
act have the importance which (ver. 35) is attached to it 
(of. John xi. 32; 3 John 10). ISTo doubt the sign and 

^ i3engel : Exprotrant de csecitate pristina. Calvin: Porinde illi in- 
iultant, acsi ab utero matris cum scelerum suorum nota prodiisset. 


THE OPENING OF THE EYES 


326 

initial act of this excommunication was the thrusting him 
forth and separating him from their own company (Acts 
vii. 58) ; ^ and so that other explanation has its relative 
truth .2 Yet this was not all, or nearly all, involved in the 
words. This violent putting of him forth from the hall of 
audience was only the beginning of the things which he 
should suffer for Christ’s sake. Still there was, to use the 
words of Fuller on this very occasion, this comfort for 
him, that ^ the power of the keys, when abused, doth not 
shut the door of heaven, but in such cases only shoot the 
bolt beside the lock, not debarring the innocent person en¬ 
trance thereat.’ 

And in him were eminently fulfilled those words, ^ Bles¬ 
sed are ye when men shall hate you, and when they 
shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach 
you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s 
sake ’ (Luke vi. 22; cf. Isai. Ixvi. 5 ; John xvi. 2). He is 
cast out from the meaner fellowship, to be received into 
the higher,—from that which was about to vanish away, 
to be admitted into a kingdom not to be moved. The 
synagogue, so soon to be ‘ the synagogue of Satan,’ rejects 
him; the Church of the living God, and Christ, the great 
K\rjBovxo 9 in that kingdom, receives him; for in him the 
words of the Psalmist shall be fulfilled, ‘ When my father 
and my mother forsake me, the Lord taketh me up ’ (Ps. 
xxvii. 12). He has not been ashamed of Christ, and now 
Christ reveals his true name and his glory unto him ; so 
that he beholds Him no longer as a prophet from God, 
which was the highest height to which hitherto his faith 
had reached, but as the Son of God Himself. Thus to him 
that hath is given, and he ascends from faith to faith. 
^ Jesus heard that they had cast him out/ and. Himself the 

^ Corn, a Lapide: Utrumque eos fecisse est credibile, scilicet caecum 
ex domo, et hoc symbolo ex Ecclesia sua, ejecis&e. 'LicfSaWeiv will tiieu 
have the technical meaning which it afterwards retained in the Church 
(see S nicer, Thes. s. v.). 

* See Vitringa, JDe Synagogd, p. 743. 


OF ONE BOEN BLIND. 


327 

Good Shepherd, went in search of this sheep in this fa¬ 
vourable hour for making it his own for ever, bringing it 
safely home to the true fold ;—^ and when He had found 
him,’ it may be in the temple (cf. John v. i^), ‘ He said 
unto him, Dost thou helieve on the ^pn of God ? ’ with an em¬ 
phasis in the original on ‘ thou ’ which it is hard to repro¬ 
duce in the English : ^ Believest thou {av), while so many 
others are disbelieving ? ’ The man knows what this title 
‘ Son of God ’ means, that it is equivalent to Messiah, but 
he knows of none with right to claim it for his own: such 
trust, however, has he in his Healer, that whomsoever He 
will point out to him as such, he will recognize. ‘ He 
answered and said. Who is He, Lord, that I might helieve on 
Him ? And Jesus said unto him. Thou hast both seen Him,^ 
audit is He that talheth with thee’ (cf. John iv. 26). This 
‘ Thou hast seen Him,’ refers to no anterior seeing; for, so 
far as we know, the man, after his eyes were opened at 
the pool, had not returned to the Lord, nor enjoyed any 
opportunity of seeing Him since. It is rather a reply to 
the question, ‘ Who is He, Lord, that I might helieve on 
Him ? ’ ^ He is one whom thou hast seen already; thou 

askest to see Him, but this seeing is not still to do; ever 
since thou hast been speaking with Me thine eyes have 
beheld Him, for He is no other than this Son of man that 
talketh with thee.’^ 

And now the end to which all that went before was but 
as the prelude, has arrived: ‘ He said, Lord, I helieve; and 
he worshipped Him ; ’ not that even now we need suppose 
him to have known all which that title, ‘ Son of God,’ con¬ 
tained, nor that, ^ worshipping ’ the Lord, he intended to 
render Him that supreme adoration, which is indeed due 
to Christ, but only due to Him because He is one with the 

^ Godet has a fine remark on these words: Les mots Tu Vas vu, rap- 
pellent express^ment le miracle par lequel il a donn^ a cot homme de 
pouvoir contempler celui qui lui parle. 

* Corn, a Lapide: Et vidisti mm, nunc cum se tibi ipse videndum 
offert. 


328 THE OPENING OF THE EYES 

Father. For ‘ God manifest in the flesh,’ is a mystery far 
loo transcendant for any man to embrace in an instant: 
the minds even of Apostles themselves could only dilate 
little by little to receive it. There were, however, in him 
the preparations for that crowning faith. The seed which 
should unfold into that perfect flower was safely laid in 
his heart; and he fell down at the feet of Jesus as of one 
more than man, with a deep religious reverence and fear 
and awe. And thus the faith of this poor man was accom¬ 
plished. Step by step he had advanced, following faith¬ 
fully the light which was given him; undeterred by op¬ 
position which would have been fatal to a weaker faith, 
and must have been so to his, unless the good seed had 
cast its roots in a soil of more than ordinary depth. But 
because it was such a soil, therefore when persecution 
arose, as it soon did, for the word’s sake, he was not 
offended (Matt. xiii. 21); but enduring still, to him at 
length that highest grace was vouchsafed, to know the 
only-begotten Son of God, however he may not yet have 
seen all the glorious treasures that were contained in that 
knowledge. In him was grandly fulfilled the prophecy of 
Isai. xxix. 18; and at once literally and spiritually: ^ In 
that day the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity 
and out of darkness.’ 

So wonderful was the whole event, so had it brought 
out the spiritual blindness of those who should have been 
the seers of the nation, so had it ended in the illumination, 
spiritual as well as bodily, of one who seemed among the 
blind, that it called forth from the Saviour’s lips those 
remarkable words in which He moralized the whole ; ‘ For 
judgment I am come into this world, that they which see 
not might see, and that they which see might he made Hindi 
Compare the remarkable words of Isaiah, xxix. 17, 18, 
which are, as it were, a prophecy of all which in this event 
found its fulfilment. ‘ I am come,’ He would say, " to reveal 
every man’s innermost state ; I, as the highest revelation 


OF OFF BORN BLIND. 


329 


of God, niust bring out men’s love and their hatred of 
what is divine as none other could (John iii. 19-21); I am 
the touchstone ; much that seemed true shall at my touch 
be proved false, to be merely dross; much that for its 
little sightliness was nothing accounted of, shall prove 
true metal: many, whom men esteemed to be seeing, such 
as tiie spiritual chiefs of this nation, shall be shown to bo 
blind ; many, whom men counted altogether imenlightened, 
shall, when my light touches them, be shown to have 
powers of spiritual vision undreamt of before ’ (Matt. xi. 
25 ; Luke v. 25 ; xv. 7). Christ was the King of truth,— 
and therefore his open setting up of his banner in the world 
was at once and of necessity a ranging of men in their 
true ranks, as lovers of truth or lovers of a lie; ^ and He 
is here saying of Himself the same thing which Simeon 
had said of Him before : ^ Behold, this Child is set for the 
fall and rising again of many in Israel, .... that the 
thoughts of many hearts may he revealed ’ (Luke ii. 34, 35). 
He is the stone on which men build, and against which 
men stumble,—and set for this purpose as for that (i Pet. ii. 
6-8 ; cf. 2 Cor. ii. 16). These words call out a further 
contradiction on the part of the Pharisees, and out of this 
miracle unfolds itself that discourse which reaches down to 
ver. 21 of the ensuing chapter. They had shown what 
manner of shepherds of the sheep they were in their ex¬ 
clusion of this one from the fold: ‘ with force and with 
cruelty have ye ruled them ’ (Ezek. xxxiv. 4; which whole 
chapter may be profitably read in the light of these ninth 
and tenth chapters of St. John) : our Lord proceeds to set 
over against them Himself, as the good Shepherd and the 
true. 

J Augustine {In Fv. Joh. tract, xliv.): Dies ille diviserat inter lucem et 
tenebras. 


19. THE RESTORING OF THE MAN WITH A WlfHEWER 

HAND, 


Matt. xii. 9-13 5 Maek iii. 1-5 ; Luke vi. 6-11. 



Mils is not the first among our Lord’s cures on the 


J- Sabbath day,* which stirs the ill-will of his adver¬ 
saries, or which is used by them as a pretext for accusing 
Him; twice already we have seen the same results to 
follow (John V. 16; ix. 12); but I have reserved till now 
the consideration, once for all, of the position which our 
Lord Himself assumed in respect of the Sabbath, and the 
light in which He regarded it. For such consideration 
the present is the most favourable occasion; since here, and 
in the discourse which immediately precedes this miracle, 
and which stands, if not quite in such close historic con¬ 
nexion as in St. Matthew’s Gospel might at first sight 

^ The sabbatical cures recorded in the Gospels are seven in number, 
namely that of the demoniac in the synagogue of Capernaum (Mark. i. 
21); of Simon’s wife’s mother (Mark i. 29); of the impotent, man at 
Bethesda (John v. 9); of this man with a withered hand; of the man 
born blind (John ix. 14); of the woman with a spirit of infirmity (Luke 
xiii. 14); of the man who had a dropsy (Luke xiv. i). "We have a 
general intimation of many more, as at Mark i. 34; and the ^one work ’ 
to which our Lord alludes, John vii. 21-23, is perhaps no recorded 
miracle, but one which is only referred to there. On the many miracles 
which our Lord thought good to effect-on this day, we have these re¬ 
marks by Jeremy Taylor {Life of Christ, pt. iii. sect. 14): ^ Jesus, that 
He might draw off and separate Christianity from the yoke of ceremonies 
by abolishing and taking off the strictest Mosaical r.He«. chose to do very 
many of his miracles upon the Sabbath, that He might ao tbe work of 
abrogation and institution both at once; not much unlike the sahoatical 
pool in Judaea, which was dry six days, but gushed out in a full stream 
on the Sabbath; for though upon all days Christ was operative and 
miraculous, yet many reasons did concur and determine Him to a more 
frequent working upon those days of public ceremony and convention.’ 


MAN WITH A WITHERED HAND RESTORED. 331 


appear, yet in closest inner relation to it, onr Lord Him¬ 
self deals with, the question, and delivers the weightiest 
words which on this matter fell from his lips. 

We go back then to that preceding discourse, and to the 
circumstances which gave rise to it. The Pharisees were 
offended with the disciples for plucking ears of corn and 
eating them upon the Sabbath. It was not the act itself, 
as an invasion of other men’s property, which offended, 
for the very law which they stood forward to vindicate 
had expressly permitted as much ; ‘ When thou comest 
into the standing corn of thy neighbour, then thou mayest 
pluck the ears with thine hand ’ ^ (Dent, xxiii. 25) ; by 
limitations even slight as this upon an absolute proprietor¬ 
ship God asserting that He was Himself the true proprietor 
of all the land, and that all other held only of Him. Hot 
then in what they did, but in the day on which they did it, 
the fault of the disciples, if any, consisted. The Pharisees 
accuse them to their Lord: ^ Wliy do they on the Sabbath 
day that which is not lawful ? ’ Either He shall be obliged 
to confess his followers transgressors of the law; or, 
defending them, shall become a defender of the transgres¬ 
sion;—in either case a triumph for his foes. So they 
calculate, but the issue disappoints their calculation (cf. 
Matt. xxii. 15-22). The Lord seeks in his reply to raise 
the objectors to a truer point of view from which to con¬ 
template the act of his disciples; and by two examples, 
and these drawn from that very law which they believed 
they were asserting, would show them how the law, if it 
is not to work mischievously, must be spiritually handled 
and understood. 

These examples are derived, one from the Old-Testament 
history, the other from that temple-service continually 
going on before their eyes. The first, David’s claiming 
and obtaining the show-bread from the High priest on the 
occasion of his flight from Saul (i Sam. xxi. 1-6, might) 

* See Eobinson’s Researches^ vol. ii. p. 192. 

15 


332 


TEE RESTOMINO OF THE 


be expected to carry weight with them whom He is seek¬ 
ing to convince, David being for them the great pattern 
and example of Old-Testament holiness: ^ Will ye affirm 
that they did wrong,—David who in that necessity claimed, 
or the High priest who gave to him, the holy bread ? ’ 
The second example came yet nearer home to the gain- 
sayers, and was more cogent still, being no exceptional 
case, but one grounded in the very constitution of the 
Levitical service : ‘ Ye do yourselves practically acknow¬ 
ledge it right that the rest of the Sabbath should give 
place to a higher interest, to the service of the temple; 
that^ as the lesser, it should be subordinated, and, where 
needful, offered up to this as the greater. The sacrifices, 
with all the laborious preparations which they require, do 
not cease upon the Sabbath (Hum. xxviii. 8, 9); all which 
is needful for completing them is accomplished upon that 
day ; yet no one accounts the priests to be therefore in any 
true sense violators of the law; ^ such they would rather 
be if they left these things undone.’^ And then, lest the 
Pharisees should retort, or in their hearts make exception, 
that the work referred to was wrought in the service of 
the temple, and Was therefore permitted, while there was 
no such serving of higher interests here. He adds, ^ But I 
say unto you, That in this place is One greater than the tern- 
pie;’ One whom therefore, by still better right, his ser- 
rants may serve, and be guiltless.^ He contemplates his 

’ Ministerium pellit salbbatiim, was a maxim of their own, 

® He pursues the same argument John vii. 22, 23. ^For the sake of 
circumcision you do yourselves violate the Sabbath. Rather than not 
keep Moses’ commandment that the child be circumcised on the eighth 
day, you will, if that eighth be a Sabbath, accomplish all the work of 
circumcision upon it; and in thus making the Sabbath, which is lower, 
give place to circumcision, which is higher, you have right. But the 
cures which I accomplish are greater than circumcision itself. That is 
but receiving the seal of the covenant upon a single member; my cures 
are a making the entire m&n (oXog av 0 pw 7 ro<:) whole. Shall not the 
Sabbath then by much better right give place to these works of mine ? ’ 

* Theophylact: ’A\Xd Xtytig got on SKtivoi ifptXg fiaav, 0) dt paOtjral ov, 
Alyw ovv on row upov fiH^ov iari ioSe, Cocceius : Hoc argumentum urget 


WITH A WITHERED HAND. 


333 


disciples as already the priests of the New Covenant, of 
which He is Himself the living Temple.* It was in their 
needful service and ministration to Him, which left them 
no leisure regularly to prepare food or to eat, that they 
were an hungered, and profaned, as their adversaries 
esteemed it, the Sabbath. But if those who ministered 
in that temple which was but the shadow of the true, 
might without fault accomplish on the Sabbath whatso¬ 
ever was demanded by that ministry of theirs,—if, as 
every man’s conscience bore witness, they were blameless 
in such a profanation of the Sabbath as this, and only 
seemed to transgress the law that really they might keep 
it, by how much better right were they free from all blame, 
who ministered about the Temple not made with hands, 
the true Tabernacle, which the Lord had pitched and not 
man! * 

But it is not enough to absolve his disciples of any fault 
in this matter; the malignant accusation must not pass 
without rebuke; these ‘judges of evil thoughts’ shall 
themselves be judged. ‘ But if ye had Tcnown what that 
meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not 
have condemned the guiltless.^ If with all their searching 
into the Scripture, all their busy scrutiny of its letter, they 

contra tacitam exceptionem, nempe, discipulos Christi in agro non in 
templis fecisse opus non sacerdotale. Christus ostendit majorem templo 
hie esse, oignificans se Dominum templi esse, Mai. iii. i; Jer. xi. 15. 
Quemadmodiim igitur sacerdotes licite fecerunt opera, quae pertinehant 
ad cultum Dei ceremonialem; ita discipuli Christi licite fecerunt ilia quse 
necesse erat facere, ut servirent ipsi vero templo et Domino templi. The 
argument is not affected by admitting instead of fxtitiuv into the 

text, as Lachmann and the best critical editions have done: cf. Matt, 
xii. 42, l^ov irXfiov 'S.oXoi^iwvTOQ utof, 

^ Augustine (Quesst. xvii. in Matth. qu. 10): Unum exemplum datum 
regies potestatis de David, alteram sacerdotalis de iis qui per ministerium 
templi sabbatum violant: ut multo minus ad ipsum evulsarum sabbato 
spicarum crimen pertineat, qui verus rex et verus sacerdos est, ideo Do- 
minus sabbati. 

* Irenasus {Con. Hesr. iv. 8, 3): Per legis verba suos discipulos ex- 
cusans, et significans licere sacerdotibus libere agere. . . . Sacerdotes 
autem sunt omnes Domini Apostoli, qui neque agros nequo domos haere- 
ditant hie, sed semper altari et Deo serviunt. 


334 


the restoring of the 


had ever so far entered into the spirit of that law, whereof 
they professed to be the jealous guardians and faithful 
interpreters, as to understand the prophet’s meaning here, 
they would not have blamed them in whom no true blame 
could be found. The citation, not now made for the 
first time by our Lord (cf. Matt. ix. 13), is from Hosea (vi. 
6), and has some ambiguity for an English reader; which 
would be avoided by such a rendering as this, ‘ I desire 
mercy, and not sacrifice.’ ^ In these memorable words we 
have one of those prophetic glimpses of the Gospel, one of 
those slights cast upon the law even during the times of the 
law, an example of that ‘ finding fault ’ on God’s part with 
that very thing which He had Himself established (Heb. 
viii. 8), whereby a witness was borne even for them who 
lived under the law, that it was not the highest, God having 
some better and higher thing in reserve for his people 
(Ps. 1 . 7-15 ; Jer. xxxi. 31-34). The prophet of the Old 
Covenant is here anticipating the great Apostle of the 
New, saying in other words, but with as distinct a voice, 
‘ Though I speak with the tongues of men and of Angels, 
and though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and 
though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, 
it profiteth me nothing ’ (i Cor. xiii. 1-3). He is declaring 
that what God longs for on their part who profess to be 
servants of his, is not the outward observance, the sacrifice 
in the letter, but the inward outpouring of love, that 
which the ‘ sacrifice ’ symbolizes, the giving up of self 
in the self-devotion of love (cf. Heb. x. 5-10 ; Ps. xl. 6-8; 
1. 8-14; li. 16, 17; Jer. vii. 22, 23). This must underlie 
every outward sacrifice and service which shall have any 
value in his sight; and when a question arises between 
the form and the spirit, so that the one can only be pre¬ 
served by the abandonment of the other, then the form 
must yield to the life, as the meaner to the more precious. 

^ In tllG LXX, Oe\u)j Tf OvffiaVf Kal iiriyrtoaiv Ofov, rj oXokov* 

Ttofjiara, 


MAN WITH A WITHERED HAND. 


335 


In tliis spirit those have acted, and with a true insight 
into the law of love, as the highest law of all, who in 
urgent necessities have sold the most sacred vessels of the 
Church for the redemption of captives, or for the saving, in 
a time of famine, of lives which otherwise would have 
perished. 

I But the application of the words in the present instance 
still remains unsettled. They might be taken thus : ‘ If 
you had at all known what God desires of men, what 
service of theirs pleases Him best, you would then have 
understood that my disciples, who in love and pity for 
perishing souls had so laboured and toiled as to go without 
their necessary food, were offering that very thing ; ^ you 
would have seen that their loving violation was better 
than other men’s cold and heartless fulfilment of the letter 
of the commandment.’ Or else the words may refer more 
directly to the Pharisees: ‘ If you had understood the 
service wherein God delights the most, you would have 
sought to please Him by meekness and by mercy,—by a 
charitable judgment of your brethren,—by that love out of 
a pure heart, which to Him is more than all whole burnt- 
offerings and sacrifices (Mark xii. 33), rather than in the 
way of harsh, severe, and unrighteous censure of your 
brethren’ (Prov. xvii. 15; Isai. v. 23). So Olshausen:^ 
‘This merciful love was just what was wanting in the 
fault-finding of the Pharisees. It was no true bettering 
of the disciples which they desired; no pure zeal for the 
cause of God urged them on. Bather sought they out of 
envy and an inner bitterness to bring something against 
the disciples; and, in fact, out of this did, in an apparent 
zeal for the Lord, persecute the Lord in his disciples. 

1 Maldonatus: Hoc est quod Apostolos maxime excusabat, quod in 
pradicando et faciendis miraculis adeo fuissent occupati, ut nec parare 
cibum nec capere possent. 

2 So Wolf {Cures, in loc.) : Non dubitaverim verba bsec opponi judicio 
PharisaDorum immiti etrigido, de discipulis tanquara violatoribus sabbati, 
rato. 





THE SESTOEINO OF THE 


336 

They condemned the guiltless ; ” for the disciples had not 
out of ennui, for mere pastime’s sake, plucked those ears, 
hut out of hunger (ver. i). Their own they had forsaken, 
and they hungered now in their labour for the kingdom of 
God. The}^ stood therefore in the same position as David 
the servant of God, who, in like manner, with them that 
were with him, hungered in the service of the Lord; as 
the priests, who in the temple must labour on the Sabbath, 
and so for the Lord’s sake seem to break the law of the 
Lord. While this was so, they also might without scruple 
eat of the show-bread of the Lord: what was God’s, was 
also theirs.’ 

St. Mark has alone preserved for us the important words 
which follow: ^ The Sahbath was made for man, and not 
man for the Sabbath ’ (ii. 27). The end for which the 
Sabbath was ordained was that it might bless man; the 
end for which man was created was not that He might 
observe the Sabbath. A principle is here laid down, which 
it is impossible to restrict to the Sabbath, which must 
extend to the whole circle of outward ordinances. The 
law was made for man ; not man for the law. Man is the 
end, and the ordinances of the law the means; not these 
the end, and man the means (cf. 2 Macc. v. 19; a remark¬ 
able parallel). Man was not created to the end that he 
might observe these; but these were given, that they 
might profit man, discipline and train him, till he should 
be ready to serve God from the free impulses of his spirit.^ 
And all this being so, ‘ therefore the Son of man is Lord also 
of the Sabbath.'' To affirm with Grotius, that ‘ Son of man ’ 
has no deeper meaning here than ^ man.' in the verse 
preceding (thus Ezek. ii. i; hi. i; iv. i; v. i ; vi. 2, and 
often), that the context gives no room for any other 
interpretation, and from this to conclude that the Sabbath 

^ Even in tlie Talmud it was said, ‘ The Sahhath is in your hands, not 
you in the hands of the Sahhath; for it is written, The Lord hath 
yen the Sahbath, Exod. xvi. 295 Ezek. xx. 12.’ 


MAN WITH A WITHERED HAND. 


337 


being ^made for man,^ man therefore can deal with the 
Sabbath as he will, is a serious error. ^ For, in the first 
place, in no single passage of the New Testament where 
‘ Son of man ’ occurs (and they are eighty-eight in all) 
does it mean other than the Messiah, the Man in whom 
the idea of humanity was altogether fulfilled. And then 
secondly, among all the bold words with which St. Paul 
declares man’s relations to the law, he never speaks of him, 
even after he is risen with Christ, as being its ^ lord,^ The 
redeemed man is not, indeed, under the law; he is released 
from his bondage to it, so that it is henceforth with him, 
as a friendly companion, not over him, as an imperious 
master.^ But for all this it is God’s law, the expression of 
his holy will concerning man; and he, so long as he bears 
about a body of sin and death, and therefore may at any 
moment need its restraints, never stands above it; rather, 
at the first moment of his falling away from the liberty of 
a service in Christ, will come under it anew. Even of the 
ceremonial law man is not lord, that he may loose himself 
from it, on the plea of insight into the deeper mysteries 
which it shadows forth. He must wait a loosing from it 
at those hands from which it first proceeded, and which 
first imposed it upon him. But the ^ Son of man,^ who is 
also Son of God, has power over all these outward ordi¬ 
nances. It was He who first gave them as a preparatory 
discipline for the training of man; and when they have 
done their work, when this preparatory discipline is ac¬ 
complished, it is for Him to remove them (Heb. ix. 11-15). 
‘ Made under the law ’ in his human nature (Gal. iv. 4), 

* Cocceius answers well: Non sequitur: Hominis causa factum est 
satbatum ; Ergo bomo est dominus sabbati. Sed bene sequitur: Ergo is, 
cujus est homo, et qui propter bominem venit in mundum, quique omnem 
potestatem in cselo et terra possidet, in hominis salutem et bonum est et 
Dominus sabbati. Ceterum Dominus sabbati non esset, nisi esset supre- 
mus voiioOtTijc, et nisi ad ipsius gloriam pertineret sabbati institutio, et 
ejus usus ad salutem hominis. 

* He is not, to use Augustine’s fine distinction, sub lege, but cum lege 
and m lege. 



THE RESTORING OF THE 


338 

He 'is above tlie law, and lord of tlie law, bj right of that 
higher nature which is joined with his human. He there¬ 
fore may pronounce when the shadow shall give place to 
the substance, when his people hare so made one their own 
that they may forego the other. Christ is ^ the end of the 
law,’ and that in more ways than one. To Him it pointed; 
in Him it is swallowed up; being Himself living law; yet 
not therefore in any true sense the destroyer of the law, 
as the adversaries charged Him with being, but its trans¬ 
former and glorifier, changing it from a bondage to a 
liberty, from a shadow to a substance, from a letter to a 
spirit^. (Matt. v. 17, 18). 

To this our Lord’s clearing of his disciples, or rather of 
Himself in his disciples (for it was at Him that the shafts 
of their malice were indeed aimed), the healing of the 
man with a withered hand is by St. Matthew immediately 
attached, although from St. Luke we learn that it was on 
‘ another Sabbath ’ that it actually found place. Like the 
very similar healing of the woman with a spirit of infirmity 
(Luke xiii. 11), like that of the demoniac at Capernaum 
(Mark i. 2, 3), it was wrought in a synagogue. There, in 
‘ their synagogue,^ the synagogue of those with whom He 
had thus disputed, He encountered ‘ a man who had his 
hand withered’,^ his ^right hand,^ as St. Luke tells us. 
His disease, which probably extended through the arm, 
had its origin in a deficient absorption of nutriment; was 
a partial atrophy, showing itself in a gradual wasting of 
the size of the limb, with a loss of its powers of motion, 
and ending with the total cessation in it of all vital action. 
When once thoroughly established, it is incurable by any 
art of man.* 

^ Augustine {Serm. cxxxvi. 3) : Dominus sabbatum solvebat: sed non 
ideo reus. Quid est quod dixi, sabbatum solvebat ? Lux ipse veuerat, 
umbras removebat. Sabbatum enim a Domino Deo prjEceptum est, ab 
ipso Christo prjBceptum, qui cum Patre erat, quando lex ilia dabatur; ab 
ipso prseceptum est, sed in umbr^ futuri. 

* See ^Viner, Realwovterhuch^ s. v. Kranhheiien, In the apocryphal 


J/AiV WITH A WITHERED HAND. 


339 


The apparent variation in the different records of this 
miracle, that in St. Matthew the question proceeds from 
the Pharisees, in the other Gospels from the Lord, is no 
real one; the reconciliation of the two accounts is easy. 
The Pharisees first ask Him, ‘ Is it lawful to heal on the 
Sahhath day ? ’ He answers question with question, as 
was so often his custom (see Matt. xxi. 24): ^ I will ash 
you one thing. Is it lawful on the Sahhath days to do good 
or to do evil ? to save life or destroy it ? ’ With the same 
infinite wisdom which we admire in his answer to the 
lawyer’s question, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ (Luke x. 29), 
He shifts the whole argument, lifts it up altogether into a 
higher region; and then at once it is evident on which 
side the right lies. They had put the alternative of doing 
or not doing; there might be a question here. But He 
shows that the alternative is, the doing good or the failing 
. to do good,—which last He puts as identical with doing 
evil, the neglecting to save as equivalent to destroying 
(Prov. xxiv. II, 12). Here there could be no question; 
this under no circumstances could be right; it could never 
be good to sin. Therefore it is not merely allowabl^but 
a duty, to do some things on the Sabbath.* ‘Ypa,’ He 

Gospel according to the Hehreics, in use among the Nazarenes and 
Ebionites, which was probably our St. Matthew, with some extraneous 
additions, this man is a mason, who thus pleads for his own healing: 
Csementarius eram, manibus victum quaeritans : precor te, Jesu, ut mihi 
restituas sanitatem, ue turpiter mendicem cibos. The xdipa ixiov 
is~ri]v aSpapijg div of Philostratus {Vita Apollon. iii. 30), whom the 
Indian sages heal. 

1 Danzius (in Meuschen, Nov. Test, ex Talm. illusfr. p. 585) : Immutat 
ergo benehcus Servator omnem controversiae statum, ac longe eundem 
ractius, quam fraudis isti artifices, proponit. In his interesting and 
learned Essay, Christi Curatio Sabhathica vindicata ex legihus Judaicis, 
Danzius seeks to prove by extracts from their own books that the Jews 
were not at all so strict, as now, when they would accuse the Lord, they 
professed to be, in their own observance of the Sabbath. He finds proo| 
of this (p. 607) in the words, ‘ Thou hypocrite, addressed on one such 
occasion to the ruler of the synagogue (Luke xiii. 15). It is hard to 
judge how far he has made out his point, without knowing how far the 
extracts in proof, confessedly from w'orks of a later, often a far later, date, 
fairly represent the earlier Jewish canons. In the apocryphal gospels 


340 


THE BE STORING OF THE 


goes on, ‘and works mucli less important and urgent tLan 
that which I am about to do, you would not yourselves 
leave undone. What man shall there he among yon, that 
shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the Sahhath 
day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out ? How much 
then is a man letter than a sheep ? You have asked Me, Is 
it lawful to heal on the Sabbath ? I reply. It is lawful to 
do well on that day, and therefore to heal.’ ‘ They held, 
their peace,’ having nothing to answer more. 

‘ Then,’ —that is, ‘ when He had looTced round about on 
them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts 
(Mark hi. 5), — saith He to the man. Stretch forth thy hand’ 
The presence of grief and anger in the same heart at the 
same time is no contradiction. Indeed, with Him who 
was at once perfect love and perfect holiness, grief for the 
sinner must ever go hand in hand with anger against the 
sin; and this anger, which with us is in danger of be¬ 
coming a turbid thing, of passing into anger against the 
man, who is God’s creature, instead of being anger against 
the sin, which is the devil’s corruption of God’s creature,— 
with Him was perfectly pure; for it is not the agitation of 
the waters, but the sediment at the bottom, which troubles 
and defiles them; and where no sediment is, no impurity 
will follow on their agitation. This important notice of 
the anger with which the Lord looked round on these evil 
men we owe to St. Mark, who has so often preserved for 
us a record of the passing lights and shadows which swept 
over the countenance of the Lord (vii. 34 ; x. 21). The 
man obeyed the word, which was a ^ord of power; he 
stretched forth his hand, ^and it was restored! whole like as 
the other,’ 

(see Thilo, Codex Apocryphus, pp. 502, 558), it is very observable how 
prominent a place among the charges brought against Christ on his trial, 
are the healings wrought upon the Sabbath. 

^ 'k-KOKaTtcrddr}. Josephus (Antt. viii. 8. 5) uses the remarkable word 
dva^ujTTvpsiv (cf. 2 Tim. i. 6) in relating the restoration of Jeroboam’s 
withered arm (i Kin. xi. 6). 


MAF WITH A WITHERED HAND 


341 


Hereupon the exasperation of Christ’s enemies rises to 
the highest pitch. He has broken their traditions; He 
has put them to silence and to shame before all the people. 

They were filled with madness^ as St. Luke tells us; or, in 
the words of St. Matthew, ‘ went out and held a council 
against Him^ how they might destroy Him ’ (cf. John xi. 53). 
In their blind hate they snatch at the nearest weapon in 
their reach; do not even shrink from joining league with 
the Herodians, the Romanizing party in the land,— 
attached to Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee, who was 
only kept on his throne by Roman influence,—if between 
them they may bring to nothing this new power which 
equally menaces both. So, on a later occasion (Matt, 
xxii. 16), the same parties are leagued together to ensnare 
Him. For thus it is ever with the sinful world. Its 
factions, divided against one another, can yet lay aside for 
the moment their mutual jealousies and enmities, to join 
in a common conspiracy against the truth. The kingdom 
of lies is no longer a kingdom divided against itself, when 
the kingdom of the truth is to be opposed. Between lie 
and lie, however seemingly antagonistic, there are always 
points of contact, so -that they can act together for a 
while ; it is only between a lie and the truth that there is 
absolute opposition, and no compromise possible. Herod 
and Pilate can be friends together, if it be for the de¬ 
stroying of the Christ (Luke xxiii. 12). The Lord, aware 
of the machinations of his enemies, withdraws from their 
malice to his safer retirements in the immediate neigh- 
boui’hood of the sea of Galilee (Mark iii. 7; John xi. 53, 

S4). 


*0. THE RESTORING OF THE WOMAN WITH A SPIRIT 
OF INFIRMITY. 

Ltjke xiii. 10-17. 

W E have here another of those cures, -which, as having 
been accomplished on the Sabbath, a-woke the in¬ 
dignation of the rulers of the Je-vnsh Church; cures, of 
-which some, though not all, are recorded chiefly for the 
sake of sho-wing ho-w the Lord dealt with these cavillers ; 
and what He Himself contemplated as the true hallowing of 
that day. This being the main point which the Evangelist 
has in his eye, everything else falls into the background. 
We are not told where this healing took place; but only 
that ‘ He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the 
Sahhath.^ While there was but one temple in the land, 
and indeed for all Jews in all the world,—for that on 
Mount Gerizim and that in Egypt were alike impostures 
(John iv. 22), shells without a kernel, fanes empty of all 
presence of God,—there were synagogues in every place ; 
and in these, on every Sahbath, prayer was wont to be 
made, and the Scriptures of the Old Testament read and 
expounded (Luke iv. 16, 17; Acts xiii. 14, 15; xv. 21). 
‘ Atid, hehold^ there was a %<oom(m which had a spirit of 
infirmity eighteen years^ and was lowed together.^ and could 
in no wise lift up herself^ Had we only this account of 
what ailed her, namely that she ‘ had a spirit of infirmity* 
we might doubt whether St. Luke meant to trace up her 
complaint to any other than the natural causes, whence 
flow the weaknesses and sufferings which afflict our race. 
But the Lord’s later commentary on these words,— ^whom. 


THE WOMAN WITH A SPIRIT OF INFIRMITY. 343 


Satan hath hound,^ —shows that her calamity had a deeper 
spiritual root; though the type of her possession was 
infinitely milder than that of many others, as is plain from 
her permitted presence at the public worship of God. 
Her sickness having its first seat in her spirit, had brought 
her into a moody melancholic state, of which the outward 
contraction of the muscles of her body, the inability to lift 
herself, was but the sign and the consequence.^ 

‘And when JesuB saw her, He called her to Him, and said. 
Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity,^ —not waiting 
till his aid was sought (cf. John v. 6), though possibly her 
presence there may have been, on her part, a tacit seeking 
of that aid. As much seems implied in the words of the 
ruler of the synagogue, bidding the multitude upon other 

' This woman is often contemplated as the representative of all those 
whom the poet addresses— 

Oh curvse in terras animae I 

the erect countenance of man, in contrast with that bent downward of 
all other creatures, being the sign impressed upon his outward frame, of 
his nobler destiny, of a heavenly hope, with which they have nothing in 
common: 

Os homini sublime dedit, caelumque tueri 
Jussit, et erectos in sidera tollere vultus : 

and Juvenal, Sat. xv. 142-147, in a nobler strain; cf. Plato, Tinnsus, 
90 A. ; and the derivation by some of dvOpunrog, as the upward-looking. 
On the other hand, the looks ever bent upon the ground are a natural 
symbol of a heart and soul turned earthward altogether, and wholly 
forgetful of man’s true good, which is not beneath, but above, him. 
Thus of Mammon Milton writes; 

* Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
From heaven; for even in heaven his looks and thoughts 
Were always downward bent.’ 

Thus Augustine {Fnair. ii. in Ps. Ixviii. 24) : Qui bene audit, Sursum 
cor, curviim dorsum non habet. Erecta quippe statura exspectat spem 
repositam sibi in cselo. . . At vero qui futurm vitoe spem non intelligunt, 
jam excaecati, de inferioribus cogitant: ethoc est habere dorsum curvum, 
a quo morbo Dominus mulierem illam liberavit. Cf. Enarr. in Ps, 
xxxvii. 7 ; Qucest. Evang. ii. qu. 29 ; Ambrose, Hexaem. iii. 12; Theo-- 
phylact (in loc.} ; Tavra ds got \(iigi3ave to. Qavgara Kal sttI tov ivTog 
dvbpunrov* avyKVTtTfi yap i^vx>) orav iiri rag yTjtvag govag <ppovTidag vtvy, kui 
gTjdeu ovpavLOv % Qiiov favTd^rjrai, 


344 


THE BESTORING OF THE WOMAN 


days'tlian tlie Sabbatli to ‘come and he healed.^ ‘And He 
laid Ms hands on her,’ ^—tbis act of power, no doubt, accom¬ 
panying those words of power; and from Him there 
streamed into her the currents of a new life, so that the 
bands, spiritual and bodily, by which she was holden, were 
loosened; and ‘immediately she was made straight, and 
glorified God’ (Luke xvii. 15; xviii. 43); others, no doubt, 
of those present glorifying God with her (Matt. ix. 8; xv. 
31). Some part of this glory could not but redound to 
Him who was the immediate author of her cure. But 
there was one who could ill endure to be a witness of this 
(cf. Matt. xxi. 15, 16). That day of gladness, when, as 
these tokens evidently declared, God had visited his people, 
and raised up a great prophet among them, and given such 
power to men, was a day of fierce displeasure to him. He, 

‘ the ruler of the synagogue,’ interrupting, and so far as in 
him lay, marring that festival of joy, ‘ answered with indig¬ 
nation,^ because that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath day, 
and said unto the people. There are six days in which men 
ought to worh: in them therefore come and be healed, and not 
on the Sabbath’ Hot venturing to come into direct colli¬ 
sion with the Lord, he seeks circuitously and covertly to 
reach Him through the people, who were more submitted 
to his influence, and whom he feared less. He takes 
advantage of his position as interpreter of the oracles of 
God; and from ‘ Moses’ seat ’ would fain persuade them 
that this work done to the glory of God—this undoing of 
the heavy burden—this unloosing the chain of Satan,—was 
a servile work, and one therefore forbidden on the Sabbath. 
Eebuking them for coming to be healed, he indeed has 
another in his eye, and means that rebuke to glance off 

^ Chrysostom (in Cramer, Catena): Ylpoef-inTiQritn Sk koI xapac avr^, 
tVa fjidOojfiev on rijv tov Qtov \6yov [AoyouP] Svvafiiv re Kal ivepyeiav t} dyia 
TretpopTjKS (tdp%. 

* Augustine (Enarr. ii. in Ts. Ixviii. 24): Bene scandalizati sunt de 
ilia erecta, ipsi curvi. And again {Serm. cccxcii. 1): Calumniabantur 
autem erigenti, qui, nisi curvi ? 


WITH A SPIMIT OF INFIRMITY. 


345 

on Him, who upon this day had been willing to be a 
Healer. 

The Lord takes him up with unusual severity. ^ Thoio 
hypocrite P He calls him—zeal for God being only the 
cloak which he wore, to hide from others, or perhaps in a 
more hopeless hypocrisy still, from himself as well, his 
hatred to all which was holy and divine. And this his 
hypocrisy Christ proceeds to lay bare to him, making him 
to feel that, however he might plead to himself or to others 
the violation of the Sabbath as the cause of his indigna¬ 
tion, its real ground lay in the fact that Christ was glori¬ 
fied by the cure upon that day wrought: ^ Doth not each 
one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, 
and lead him away to watering ? And ought not this woman, 
being a daughter of Abraham, whom, Satan hath bound, lo, 
these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath 
day ? ’ Every word of this answer tells. He does not so 
much defend his breach of the Sabbath, as deny that He 
has broken it at all: * ‘ You have your relaxations of the 
Sabbath’s strictness, required by the very nature and 
necessities of your earthly condition; you make no diffi¬ 
culty in the matter, where, through work left undone on the 
Sabbath, loss would ensue to you in your earthly posses¬ 
sions. Tour ox and your ass are precious in your sight, 
and, whatever you may hold or teach concerning the strict¬ 
ness with which the Sabbath should be kept, disciples of 
Hillel or disciples of Schammai, you loose them on that 
day; yet are angry now that I should loose a human spirit, 
which as such is of more value than many beasts. And 
these animals, when you unloose them, have not been tied 
up for more than a few hours; while I, in your thoughts, 
may not unloose from the thraldom of Satan this captive 

* Terin\\i?in (^Adv. Marc. iv. 30): Unusquisque vestrdm sabbatis non 
solvit asinum aut bovem suum a praesepi et ducit ad potum ? Ergo 
secundum conditionem legis operatus, legem confirmavit, non dissolvit, 
jubentem nullum opus fieri, nisi quod fieret omni animas, quanto potius 
humauae. Cf. Irenaeus, Con. Hcer. iv. 8 . 


TEE MESTORINa OE TEE WOMAN. 


346 

of eigliteeii years/ Yours too is a laborious process of 
unfastening and leading away to water,—wbicb yet (and 
rightly) you do not omit; being at tbe same time offended 
with Me, who have but spoken a word, and with that word 
have released a soul/ ** There lies at the root of this ar¬ 
gument, as of so much else in Scripture, an implied asser¬ 
tion of the specific difference between man, the lord of 
creation, for whom everything else was made, on the one 
side, and all the inferior orders of beings which occupy the 
same earth with him, and to which upon the side of his 
body he is akin, on the other. He is, and at the same 
time is much more than, the first link in this chain and 
order of beings (cf. i Cor. ix. 9: ‘ Doth God take care of 
oxen ? ’ Ps. viii. 8 ; Luke xii. 6, 7). But besides the com¬ 
mon claims of humanity, this woman had other and still 
stronger claims to this help from Him. She was a ‘ daugh¬ 
ter of Abraham ; ’—-an inheritress, as perhaps the Lord 
would imply, of the faith of Abraham, ^ an Israelite indeed,’ 
—^however, for the' saving of her soul in the day of the 
Lord, she had come under the scourge of Satan and this 
long and sore affliction of the flesh; at all events, she was 
a member of that house of Israel which had the first ris^ht 
to all the benefits and blessings, spiritual and temporal, 
by Him brought into the world (Matt. xv. 26; Horn. iii. i, 
2; xi. i). The narrow-hearted Scribe might grudge to 
behold her a partaker of this grace ; but in his eye^ it was 
only meet that she should receive it. So He puts to 
silence the malice of ignorant men.^ 


^ Amlbrose {Exp. in Luc. vii. 175): Vinculum yinculo comparat. . . . 
Cum ipsi animalibus eabbato solvunt vincula, reprehendunt Bominum, 
qui homines a peccatorum vinculis liberavit. 

* Chemnitz {Earm. Evang. 112): Tempus etiam inter se confert. 
Jumenta fortassis ad noctem unam aut paucos dies praesepi alligantur. 
At vero haec femina vel saltern ob temporis prolixitatem omnium com- 
miseratione dignissima est. 

^ In a Sermon on the Day of the Nativity {So'm. Inedd. p. 33) Augus¬ 
tine makes the following application of this history: Inclinavit se, cum 


WITH A SPIRIT OF INFIRMITY. 


ZM 


sublimis esset, iit nos qui incurvati eramus, erigeret. Incurvata siquidem 
erat humana natura ante adventum Domini, peccatoriim onere depressa; 
et quidem se in peccati vitium spontanea voluntate curvaverat, sed sponte 
se erigere non valebat. . . . Hsec autem mulier formam incurvationis 
totius bumani generis preeferebat. In hac muliere bodie natus Dominiis 
noster vinciilis Satanse alligatos absolvit, et licentiam nobis tribuic ad 
superna conspicere, ut qui oiim constituti in miseriis tiistes amouiabamus, 
hodie venientem ad nos medicum suscipientes, nimirum gaudeamus. 


21. THE HEALING OF THE MAN WITH A DROPSY, 


LtrxE xiv. 1-6. 


iL which is most remarkable in the circumstances of 



this miracle has been already anticipated in others, 
chiefly in the two just considered, to which the reader is 
referred. Our Lord in his great long-suffering did not 
even at this late period of his ministry treat the Pharisees 
as wholly and finally hardened against the truth; but still 
seeking to win them for his kingdom, He had accepted the 
invitation of a chief among them ‘ to eat bread ’ in his 
house. This was upon the Sabbath, with the Jews a 
favourite day for their festal entertainments : for it is an 
entire mistake to suppose that the day was with them one 
of rigorous austerity; on the contrary, the practical abuse 
of the day was rather a turning of it into a day of riot and 
excess.^ The invitation, though accepted in love, yet had 
not been given in good faith; in the hope rather that the 
close and more accurate watching of his words and ways, 
which such an opportunity would afford, might furnish 
matter of accusation against Him.^ Mischief lurked in the 
apparent courtesy which was shown Him, nor could the 

^ On the abuses in this hind of the Jemsh Sabbath at a iater day see 
Chrysostom, De Lazaro, Horn, i j Augustine, Enarr, li. m Fs. xxxii. a j 
Enarr. in Ps. xci. i; Sef'm. ix. 3. Compare Plutarch {^Symp. iv. 6): "Orav 



* The emphasis, however, which Hammond finds in the jcai awro/, even 
they that had invited Him treacherously watched Him, is questionable. 
Such a superabounding /cat is frequent in St. Luke. 


HEALING OF THE MAN WITH A DMOFSY. 349 


sacred laws of hospitality defend Him from the ever^wake- 
ful malice of his foes. They watched Him, ’ ^ 

^ And behold, there was a certain man before Him which 
had the dropsy I Some have even suggested that this suf¬ 
ferer was of design placed betbre Him. But although it is 
quite conceivable of these malignant adversaries, that they 
should have laid such a snare as this, still there is no 
warrant for a scribing to them such treachery here; and 
the difficulty which some find, that if no such plot had 
existed, the man would scarcely have found his way into 
the house of the Pharisee, rests upon an ignorance of the 
almost public life of the East, and a forgetting how easily 
in a moment of high excitement, such as this of our 
Saviour’s presence must have been, the feeble barriers 
which the conventional rules of society might oppose to 
his entrance would have been overthrown (Luke vii. 36, 37). 
At any rate, if such plot there was, the man himself was 
no party to it; for the Lord ‘ tooh him, and healed him, 
and let him go I 

But before He did this. He justified the work which He 
would accomplish, as more than once He had justified 
similar works of grace and love wrought upon the Sabbath, 
and demanded of these Lawyers and Pharisees, interpreters 
of the law, ‘ Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day ? ’ Here, 
as in so many matters of debate, it only needs for the 
question to be rightly stated, and all is so clear, that the 
possibility of its remaining a question any longer has for 
ever vanished; ^ there can be but one answer. But as 
this answer they would not give, they did what alone was 
possible, ^ they held their peace ; ’ for they would not assent, 
and they could not gainsay. He proceeds : ^ Which of you 

* "Effav TrapaTrjpovfiEvci. For p. Similar use of TrapaTYiptiv compare vi. 
7; XX. 20; Mark iii. 2; Dan, vi. ii. 

2 Tertullian {Ado. Marc. iv. 12): Adimplevit enim et He Legem, dum 
conditionem interpretatur ejus, dum operum difFerentiam illuminat, dum 
facit quae lex de sabbati feriis excipit, dum ipsum sabbati diem, benedic- 
tione Patris a primordio sanctum, benefactione sua efficit sanctiorem, in 
quo scilicet divina praesidia ministrabat. 


350 HEALING OL THE MAN WITH A DROPSY. 


shall have an ass ^ or an ox fallen into a fit, and ivill not 
straightway pull him ou t on the Sohhath day ? ’ Olshausen : 
^As on other occasions (Matt. xh. ii; Lnke xiii. 15), the 
Lord brings back those present to their own experience, 
and lets them feel the keen contradiction in which their 
blame of Christ’s free work of love sets them with them¬ 
selves, in that, where their worldly interests were at hazard, 
they did that very thing whereof they made now an occasion 
against Him.’ We may observe, that as in that other case, 
where the woman was hound. He adduces the example of 
unbinding a beast (Luke xiii. 15),—so in this, where the 
man was dropsical, a sufferer from water, the example He 
adduces has an equal fitness.^ ‘ You grudge that I should 
deliver this man on such a day from the water that is 
choking him; yet if the same danger from water threatened 
ought of your own, an ass or an ox, you would make no 
scruple of extricating that on the Sabbath. Why then do 
you not love your neighbour as yourselves ? why are you 
unwilling that he should receive the help which you would 
freely render to your own ? ’ ^ And they could not answer 

Him again to these things."^ They were silenced, but not 
convinced; and the truth, which did not win them, did 
the only other thing which it could do, exasperated them 
the more; they replied nothing, biding their time (cf. 
Matt. xii. 14). 

^ Strange as the reading vwq instead of 6voq at first sight appears, ^ a 
son,^ and not ‘an ass/ the authorities for it are so overwhelming (I 
believe they includea ll the Uncial MSS.), that one has no right on the 
ground of internal difficulties to reject it. These, moreover, are not so 
serious as at first sight they seem. It is true the argument a minori ad 
majus is thus invalidated, but another is substituted in its room; an 
appeal, namely, to the great ethical rule, ‘ Thou shalt love thy neighbour 
as thyself: Griesbach recommended v\6g ; Scholz, Tischendorf, Lachmann 
all adopt it. Exod. xxi. 33, to which the favourers of 6voq appeal, tells 
both ways. It may support the reading 6voc, but it may also have suo"- 
gested it. ° 

2 So^ Augustine {Qiuest. Evany, ii. 29): Congruenter hydropicum 
animali quod cecidit inputeum, comparavit; humore enim laborabat; sicut 
et illarn mulierem quam decern et octo annis alligatam dixerat . . . compa- 
ravit jumento quod solvitur ut ad aquam ducatur. Grotius : Hydropicum 
submergendoB pecudi, ut r/)j/ avyKVKTov^yav pecudi vinctfe, comparavit. 


ti. TJTB CLEANSING OF THE TEN LEPERS. 

Luke xvii. 11-19. 

rpHE Jews who dwelt in Galilee, in their necessary 
-L journeys to keep the passover at Jerusalem, very 
commonly took the longer route, leading them across the 
Jordan, and through the region of Persea (the Gilead of 
the Old Testament), so to avoid the vexations and annoy¬ 
ances, or the worse outrages,^ to which they were exposed 
in passing through the inhospitable land of the Samaritans. 
For these, at all times unfriendly to Jews, were naturally 
most unfriendly of all to the pilgrims who, travelling up to 
the great feasts at Jerusalem, thus witnessed in act against 
the will-worship of Mount Gerizim, and against the temple 
of Samaria in which was no presence of the living God 
(John iv. 22). It is generally understood that at this 
time, notwithstanding the discomforts and dangers of that 
inhospitable route (see Luke ix. 51-565 John iv. 9), our 
Lord, with the band of his disciples, on this his last 
journey to the holy city, took the more direct and shorter 
way which led Him straight from Galilee ‘ through the 
midst of Samaria^ to Jerusalem. Certainly the words 
which we have translated, ‘ And it came to pass as He went 
to Jerusalem, that He passed through the midst of Samaria 
and Galilee,^ may bear this meaning; in our Version they 
must bear it. At the same time some understand the 
Evangelist to say that the Lord passed between these turn 

^ Joscpbus {Antt. xx. 6. i) relates the massacre by the Samaritans of a 
great number of Galilaean pilgrim?, which happened a little later than 
this. 


352 


THE CLEANSING OF 


regions, having one on his right hand, the other on hi^ 
left, and skirting them both. This would explain the men¬ 
tion, otherwise nnacconntable, of Samaria before Galilee. 
He will then have journeyed due eastward toward Jordan, 
having Galilee on his left hand, and Samaria, which is 
therefore first named, on his right: and on reaching the 
river, must either have passed over it at Scythopolis, 
where we know there was a bridge, recrossing it by the 
fords near Jericho ^ (Josh. ii. 7), or continued on the 
western bank till He reached that city, where presently 
we find Him (xviii. 35). 

‘And as He entered into a certain village, there met Him 
ten men that were lepers, which stood afar ojf,* Their com¬ 
mon misery had drawn these poor outcasts together (cf. 
2 Kin. vii. 3). It had done more. It had caused them to 
forget the fierce national antipathy which kept Jew and 
Samaritan apart; for a Samaritan, as presently appears, 
had found admission into this forlorn company. In this 
border land such a fellowship may have been easier than 
elsewhere. There has been already occasion to speak of 
the nature of leprosy, and of the meaning of the Levitical 
ordinances about it.* It was the outward symbol of sin in 
its -worst malignity, as involving therefore entire separation 
from God; not of spiritual sickness only, but of spiritual 
death, since absolute separation from the one fountain of 
life must needs be no less. These poor outcasts, in obedi¬ 
ence to the commandment (Lev. xiii. 46), ‘ stood afar off; ’ 
and out of a deep sense of their misery, yet not without 
hope that a healer was at hand, and all of them in earnest 
now to extort the benefit, however at a later period some 

^ So Wetstein: Non via recta et brevissima septentrione versus meri¬ 
diem per Samariticam regionera iter fecit, sed cum confinia Samarise et 
Galilseae venisset, ab itinere deflexit versus orientem, ita ut Samariam ad 
dextram, Galilseam ad sinistram baberetj et Jordaneni Scjthopoli, ubi 
pons erat, videtur transiisse, et juxta ripam Jordanis in Porsea descendisse, 
donee e regione Jerichuntis iteium trajiceret. 

* See page 226. 


THE TEN LEPERS. 353 

were remiss in giving thanks for it, ‘ lifted up their voices 
and said, Jesus, Master,^ have mercy on us! ^ 

^ And when He saw them, He said unto them. Go, show 
yourselves unto the priests Most instructive is it to 
observe the differences in our Lord’s dealing with the 
different sufferers and mourners brought in contact with 
Him; the manifold wisdom of the great Physician, vary¬ 
ing his treatment according to the varying needs of his 
patients; how He seems to resist a strong faith, that He 
may make it stronger yet (Matt. xv. 23-26); how He goes 
to meet a weak faith, lest it should prove altogether too 
weak in the trial (Mark v. 36); how 6ne He forgives first, 
and heals after (Matt. ix. 2, 6); and another, whose heart 
could only be reached through an earthly benefit. He first 
heals, and then forgives (John v. 8, 14). There are here, 
too, no doubt reasons why these ten are dismissed as yet 
uncleansed, and bidden to show themselves to the priests; 
while that other, whose healing was before recorded (Matt, 
viii. 2-4), is first cleansed, and not till afterwards bidden 
to present himself in the temple. These reasons I think 
we can perceive. There was here, in the first place, a 
keener trial of faith. With no signs of restoration as yet 
upon them, they were bidden to do that which implied 
that they were perfectly restored,—to undertake a journey, 
which would prove ridiculous, a labour altogether in vain, 
unless Christ’s word and promise proved true. In their 
prompt obedience they declared plainly that some weak 
beginnings of faith were working in them; the germs of 
a higher faith, which yet in the end was only perfectly 
unfolded in one.^ So much they declared, for tliey must 

1 ’ETTKTrart/, peculiar to St. Luke (v. 5; viii. 24, 45; ix. 33, 49), is 
equivalent to the Kvpu of St. Matthew. 

* Calvin: Quamvis enim fcetidam adhuc scabiem in came sua conspi- 
ciant, simul tamen ac jussi sunt se ostendere sacerdotibus, parere non 
detrectant. Adde quod nunquam, nisi fidei impulsu, profecti essent ad 
sacerdotes: ridiculum enim fuisset, ad testandam suam munditiem, leprae 
judicibus se offerre, nisi pluris illis fuisset Christi proraissio, quam praesens 
morbi sui intuitus. Visibilem in came sua lepram gestant, unico tamen 


m 


THE CLEANSING OF 


have known verj well that they were not sent to the 
priests for these to heal them. That was no part of the 
priest’s office; who did not cure, but only pronounce cnred; 
who cleansed, yet not as ridding* the leper of his sickness, 
but only as anthorita-tivcly proclaiming that this had dis¬ 
appeared, and restoring him, through certain ceremonial 
ordinances, to the fellowship of the congregation (Lev. 
xiv. 3, 4). 

Then, too, as there was a keener trial of faith, so also 
there was here a stronger temptation to ingratitude. 
When these poor men first felt and found their benefit, 
it is little likely that they were still in the immediate pre¬ 
sence of their benefactor; more probably, already out of 
his sight, and some way upon their journey; * we know not 
how far, being only told that ‘ as they went,^ they were 
cleansed ; ’ it was not therefore an easy and costless effort 
to return and render thanks to Him. Some, indeed, sup¬ 
pose that the return of the one Samaritan did not take 
place till after he had accomplished all which was com¬ 
manded him ; that he had been to Jerusalem—that he had 
offered his gift—that he had been pronounced clean—and, 
this his first duty accomplished, that he then returned to 
render thanks to the author of his benefit; the sacred 
narrative leaping over large spaces of time and many 
intermediate events for the purpose of bringing together 

Christ! verho confisi mundos se profiteri non dubitant: negari igitur non 
potest eorum. cordibus insitum. fuisse aliqiiod fidei semen. . . . Quo niagis 
timendura est, ne et nobis contingat scintillas fidei in nobis micantes 
extinguere. 

^ Calvin suggests another reason, which may have kept them away; 
Ut morbi memoriam extinguerent furtim elapsi sunt. 

^ We learn from Tertullian {Adv, Marc. iv. 35) that the Gnostic 
Marcion saw in this healing of the lepers by the way, this taking of the 
work out of the hands of the Levitical priests, a conteinpt cast by the 
Lord on the Mosaic institutions: Hie Christum semulum [legis] affirmat 
praevenientem solennia legis etiam in curatione decern leprosorum, quos 
tantummodo ire jussos ut se ostenderent sacerdotibus, in itinere purgavit, 
sine tactu jam et sine verbo, tacita potestate, et sola voluntate; and again, 
Quasi legis illusor, ut in itinere curatis ostenderet nihil esse legem cum 
ipsis sacerdotibus. There was no such passing of them by, since the 
priests’ work was not to cleanse, but to pronounce clean. 


TilE TEN LEPERS. 


355 


tlie beginning and the end of this history*^ But certainly 
the impression which the narrative leaves is different;— 
that, having advanced some little way on their commanded 
journey, perhaps in the very village itself, they were 
aware of the grace which had overtaken them ; they felt 
and knew themselves cleansed; and that then this one 
turned back in the fulness of a grateful heart to give glory 
to God and thanks to his great Healer and Saviour; like 
the Syrian Haaman, who, delivered from the same hideous 
disease, came back with all his company, beseeching the 
man of God to take a blessing at his hands (2 Kin. v. 15); 
the residue meanwhile enduring to carry away the benefit 
without one grateful acknowledgment rendered unto Him 
from whom it came, and into whose presence a very little 
labour would have brought them. The sin is only too 
common ; for, as one has well said, with allusion to their 
mighty crying which went a little before, ^ We open our 
mouths wide till God open his hand; but after, as if the 
filling of our mouths were the stopping of our throats, so 
are we speechless and heartless.’ ^ 

Even He who ^ knew what was in man,’ who had already 
so often proved the ingratitude of men, marvelled at the 
greatness of the ingratitude of these: for He asked, ^ Were 
there not ten cleansed ? ’ or rather, ‘ Were not the ten cleansed? 
hut where are the nine ? There are not found that returned 
to give glory to God, save this stranger.^ Him now He dis¬ 
misses with a second blessing, and one better than the first. 
That earlier had reached but to the healing of his body, 
and he had that in common with the unthankful nine ; but 

* Calvin halts between this opinion and that which follows; Mihi 
taraen magis probabile est, non nisi audito sacerdotis judicio ad gratiaa 
agendas venisse. . . . Nisi forte magis placet diversa conjectura,simul ac 
mundatum se vidit, antequam testimonium expeteret a sacerdotibus, ad 
ipsum auctorem pio et sanc'co ardore correptum venisse, ut sacrificium 
Buum a gratiarum actione inciperet. 

2 Bernard : Importuni ut accipiant, inquieti donee acceperint, ubi ac- 
ceperint ingrati. Calvin: Sic inopia et esuries fidem gignit, quam occidit 
gaturitas. 

16 


THE CLEANSING OE 


55 <> 

gratitude for a lower mercy obtains for him a higher, a 
blessing which is singularly his, and reaches not merely 
to the springs of bodily health, but to the healing of the 
very sources of his spiritual being. That which the others 
missed,^ to which their bodily healing should have intro¬ 
duced them, and would so have done, if they had received 
it aright, he has obtained; for to him, and to him only, it 
is said, ‘ Go thy way ; thy faith hath made thee whole.^^ 

It gives a special significance to this miracle, and 
explains its place in that Gospel which is eminently the 
Gospel for the heathen, that this thankful one should have 
been a Samaritan, a stranger therefore by brnth to the 
covenants of promise, while the nine unthankful were of 
the seed of Abraham. It was involved in this that the 
Gentiles (for this Samaritan was no better) ^ were not 
excluded from the kingdom of God; nay rather, might 
obtain a place in it before others who by nature and birth 
were children of the kingdom; that the ingratitude of 

‘ Bernard {In Cant, serin. 51): Ingratitudo ventus nrens, siccans sibi 
fontem pietatis, rorem misericordiae, fluenta gratise. And he draws the 
lesson for us: Disce in referendo gratiam non esse tardus aut segnis, disce 
ad singula dona gratias agere. Diligenter, inquit, considera qiue tibi 
opponantur [Prov. xxiii. i], ut nulla videlicet Dei dona debita gratiarum 
actione frustrentur, non grandia, non mediocria, non pusilla. Denique 
jubemur colligere fragmenta ne pereant, id est nec minima beneficia 
oblivisci. Numquid non perit quod donatur ingrato ? 

2 Calvin: Servandi verbum quidam interpretes ad carnis munditiem 
restringunt; verum si ita est, quum vivam in hoc Samaritano tidem com- 
mendet Christus, quseri potest quomodo servati fuerint alii novem; nam 
eadem promiscue omnibus sanitas obtigit. Sic ergo habendum est 
Cliristum hie aliter sestimasse donum Dei quain soleant profani homines, 
nempe tanquara salutare paterni am oris symbol um vel pignus. Sanati 
fuerunt novem leprosi, sed quia Dei gratiam impie obliterant, ipsam 
sanitatem inlicit et contaminat eorum ingratitudo, utquam decebat utilita- 
tem ex ea non percipiant. Sola igitur fides dona Dei nobis sanctificat, ut 

pura sint, et cum legitimo usu conjuncta in salutem nobis cedant. 

Servatus est sua fide Samaritanus. Quomodo P certe non ideo tantum, 
quod a lepra curatus sit (nam hoc et reliquis commune erat), sed quia in 
Dumerum filiorum Dei acceptus est, ut paterni amoris tesseram ex ejus 
manu acciperet. 

^ ’AWoyfvrjg our Lord expressly calk him; and see mj Mtes on the 
Parables, 9th edit. p. 302. 



TEE TEN LEPERS. 


3S7 


these might exclude them, while the faith of those might 
give to them an abundant entrance into all its blessings. 

How aptly does the image which this history supplies 
set forth the condition of the faithful in this world ! They 
too are to take Christ’s word that they will be cleansed, 
that in some sort they are so already (John xv. 3); for in 
baptism they have the pledge and promise and the initial 
act of it all. And this they must believe, even while they 
still feel in themselves the leprous taint of sin,—must go 
forward in faith, being confident that in the use of his 
Word and his sacraments, and all his appointed means of 
grace, slight as they may seem to meet and overcome such 
mighty mischiefs, they will find that health which according 
to the sure word of promise is in some soi-t already theirs ; 
and as they go, believing this word, using these means, 
they are healed. And for them, too, a warning is here— 
that they forget not the purging of their old sins (2 Pet. 
i. 9)—nor what those sins were, how ngly, how loathsome; 
after the manner of those nine, who perhaps did not return, 
as desiring to obliterate the very memory of all which 
once and so lately they had been. Let those who now are 
clean through the word spOken to them, keep ever in 
memory the times of their past anguish,—the times when 
everything seemed defiled to them, and they to everything; 
when they saw themselves as ^ unclean, unclean,’ shut out 
from all holy fellowship of God and men, and cried out in 
their anguish, ^ Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.^ Let 
them see to it, that they forget not all this; but let each 
remembrance of the absolving word which was spoken to 
them, with each new consciousness of a realized deliverance 
from the power and pollution of sin, bring them anew to 
the Saviour’s feet, giving glory to God by Him; lest, fail¬ 
ing in this, their guilt prove greater than even that of 
these unthankful nine. Por these carried away temporal 
mercies unacknowledged; but we should in such a case be 
seeking to carry away spiritual; not, indeed, that we 


358 THE CLEANSING OF THE TEN LEPERS. 

■ 

elLOuld succeed in so doing; since the spiritual mercy 
which is not evermore referred to its Author, sooner o:^ 
later inevitably ceases from him who hopes on auy other^' 
conditions to retain it.^ 

^ Chemnitz (Harm. Evang. 125): Remittit nos Filins Dei ad mini- 
sterium Verbi et Sacramentorum in Ecclesia; et quemadmodum hi sanati 
sunt dum iverunt, et mandate Christi obtemperarunt, ita et nos dum in 
Ecclesia Verbum Dei audimus, absolutione et Sacramentis utimur, vulfcj 
nobis Christus peccata remittere, nos sanare, ut in caelesti Jerusalem^ 
mundi corara Deo compareamus. . . . Omnes nati sumus filii irae, inv 
baptismo remittitur nobis ille reatus, sed non statim in caelos abripimurri 
verum dicit nobis, Ite, ostendite vos sacerdotibus. Leve quid ut videtur| 
iujungit. Utut autem leve sit, sequitur tamen enarrabile bonum, quia ia^ 
qui nobis hoc pra3cipit, est omnipotens Deus, qui ex minimis maxima pro- * 
ducere potest. Cf. Augustine, Qnrsst. Evang. ii. 40. 


»3. tue healing oe the haughter of the 

SYROFH(ENICIAN WOMAN 
Matt. xv. 21-283 Mark yh. 24-30. 

W E have no reason to think that at any time during his 
earthly ministry our Lord overpassed the limits of 
the Holy Land; not even when He ‘ departed into the coasts 
of Tyre and SidonJ* It was only ‘ into the borders of Tyre 
and Sidon,^ as St. Mark expressly tells us (vii. 24), that 
He went; and even St. Matthew’s words need not, and 
certainly here do not, mean more than that He approached 
the confines of that heathen land.^ The general fitness of 
things, and more than this, his own express words on this 
very occasion, ^ I am not sent hut unto the lost sheep of the 
house of Israel,’ combine to make it most unlikely that He 
had now brought his healing presence to any other but 
the people of the Covenant; and, moreover, when St. 
Matthew speaks of the ^ woman of Canaan ’ as coming out 
of that district, or ‘of the same coasts,’ he clearly shows 
that he did not intend to describe the Lord as having 
more than drawn close to the skirts of that profane land. 

Being there, He ‘ entered into a house, and would have no 
man Tcnow it : ’ but, as ‘ the ointment bewrayeth itself,’ so 
He, whose ‘Name is like ointment poured out,’ on the 
present occasion ‘ could not he hid ; ’ and among those at¬ 
tracted by its sweetness was a woman of that country,—‘ a 

1 Kumoel here: In partes Palaestinae region! Tyriorum et Sidoniorum 
finitimas. .So Exod. xvi. 35 . dg {ispog Ttjg ^ouuKTjg (LXX), ‘ to the bor¬ 
ders of Canaan.’ 



36o the healing of the daughter 

womam of Canaan^ as St. Matthew terms her, ‘ a Greeks a 
Syrojpkoenician^^ as St. Mark has it/ hj the first term in¬ 
dicating her religion, that it was not Jewish, hut heathen; 
by the second, the stock of which she came, being no other 
than that accursed race once doomed of God to a total ex¬ 
cision, root and branch (Deut. vii. 2), hut of which some 
branches had been spared by those first generations of 
Israel that should have destroyed all (Judg. ii. 2, 3). 
Everything, therefore, was against her; yet this every¬ 
thing did not prevent her from drawing nigh, from seek¬ 
ing, and as we shall presently see from obtaining, the 
boon that her soul longed after. She had heard of the 
mighty works which the Saviour of Israel had done: for 
already his fame had gone through all Syria; so that they 
brought unto Him, besides other sick, ^ those which were 
possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and 
He healed them’ (Matt. iv. 24). And she has a boon to 
ask for her daughter;—or say rather for herself, so en¬ 
tirely has she made her daughter’s misery her own: ‘Have 
mercy on me, 0 Lord, Thou Son of David; my daughter is 
grievously vexed with a devil ; ’ just as On a later occasion 
the father of the lunatic child exclaims, ‘ Have compassion 
on ws, and help us^ (Mark ix. 22). 

But she finds Him very different from that which report 
had described Him to her. That had extolled Him as the 
merciful and gracious, not breaking the bruised reed, nor 
quenching the smoking fiax, inviting every weary and 
afflicted soul to draw nigh and find rest with Him. He, 
who of Himself had anticipated the needs of others (John 
V. 6), withdrew Himself from hers; ‘He answered her not a 

^ :Zvpo(f:oivlKia<Tn, Laclimaniij S?'io« ^otriKicrna, Tischendorfj and be¬ 
tween these readings the best MSS. are divided, is very 

weakly attested: it is indeed the more Greek form, yet not therefore here 
to be preferred, but rather the contrary. See a learned note by Grotiiis, 
on Matt. XV. 22. This woman’s name, according to the Clementine 
Homilies (ii. 19), was Justa, where legends of her later life, and her 
passage from heathenism to Judaism, are to be found. 


OF TEE SYROPECENICIAN WOMAN. 361 


wordA ‘Tlie Word lias no word; tlie fountain is sealed; 
the physician withholds his remedies ’ (Chrysostom); nntil 
at last the disciples, wearied out with her persistent en¬ 
treaties, and to all appearance more merciful than their 
Lord, themselves ^ came and besought Him, saying, Send her 
awayJ* Yet was there in truth a root of selfishness out of 
which this compassion of theirs grew; for why is He to 
satisfy her and dismiss her ? ^for she crieth after us ; ’ she 
is making a scene; she is drawing on them unwelcome 
observation. Theirs is that heartless granting of a request, 
whereof most of us are conscious ; when it is granted out 
of no love to the suppliant, but to leave undisturbed his 
selfish ease from whom at length it is extorted,—a granting 
such as his who gave, but gave saying, ^ lest by her con¬ 
tinual coming she weary me’ (Luke xviii. 5). Here, as 
so often, behind a seeming severity lurks the real love, 
while under the mask of a greater easiness selfishness 
lies hid. 

These intercessors meet with no better fortune than the 
suppliant herself; and Christ stops their mouth with words 
which seem to set the seal of hopelessness on her suit: ‘ 1 
am not sent hut unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel ’ (cf. 
Matt. X. 5, 6). But in what sense was this true? All 
prophecy which went before declared that in Him, the 
promised Seed, not one nation only, but all nations of the 
earth, should be blest (Ps. Ixxii. ii; Eom. xv. 9-12). He 
Himself declared, ‘ Other sheep I have, which are not of 
this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my 
voice ’ (John x. 16). It has happened before now with the 
founders of false religions that, as success beckoned them 
on, the circle of their vision has widened; and they who 
meant at first but to give a faith to their tribe or nation, 
have aspired at last to give One to the world. But here 
aU must have been always known; the world-embracing 
reach of his mission, and of the faith which He should 
found, was contemplated by Christ from the beginning. 


362 THE HEALING OF THE DAUGHTER 

In what sense then, and under what limitations, could He 
say with truth, ‘ I am not sent hut unto the lost sheep of the 
house of Israel ’ ? Clearly it must be in his own personal 
ministry.! That ministry, for wise purposes in the coun¬ 
sels of God, should be confined to his own nation; and 
every departure from this, the prevailing rule of his whole 
earthly activity, was, and was clearly marked as, an ex¬ 
ception. Here and there, indeed, there were preludes ot 
the larger mercy which was in store,^ first drops of that 
gracious shower which should one day water the whole 
earth (John xii. 20-22). Before, however, the Gentiles 
should glorify God for his mercy. He must first be ‘a 
minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to con¬ 
firm the promises made unto the fathers ’ (Rom. xv. 8, 9). 
It was only as it were by a rebound from them that the 
grace was to light upon the heathen world; while yet that 
issue, which seemed thus accidental, was laid deep in the 
deepest counsels of God (Acts xiii. 44-49 5 9? ; xxviii. 

25-28; Rom. xi.). In Christ’s reply, as St. Mark gives it, 
^ Let the children first he filled,^ the refusal does not appear 
so absolute and final, and a glimpse is vouchsafed of the 
manner in which the blessing might yet pass on to others, 
when as many of these, ‘ the children,^ as were willing, 
should have accepted it. But there, too, the present repulse 
is absolute. The time is not yet; others intermeddle not 
with the meal, till the children have had enough. 

The woman hears the repulse which the disciples who 
had ventured to plead for her receive; but is not daunted 

1 Augustine {Sei'm. Ixxvii. 2): Hie verborum istorum oritur qu^stio: 
Unde nos ad ovile Christi de gentibus venimus, si non est missus nisi ad 
oves quae perierunt domus Israel? Quid sibi vult hujus secreti tarn alta 
dispensatio, ut cum Dominus sciret quare veniret, utique ut Ecclesiam 
baberet in omnibus gentibus, non se missum dixerit, nisi ad oves quae 
nerierunt domus Israel? Intelligimus ergo praesentiam corporis sui, 
nativitatem suam, exhibitionem miraculorum, virtutemque resurrectionis 
in illo populo eum ostendere debuisse. Jerome {Comm, in Matt, iu loc.): 
Perfectam salutem gentium passionis et resurrectionis tempori reservabat. 

* Calvin: Praeludia quaedam dare voluit communis misericordiae. 


OF THE SYROPHCENICIAN WOMAN. 363 

cr disheartened thereby. Hitherto she had been crying 
after the Lord, and at a distance; hnt now, instead of 
being put still farther from Him, ‘came she and worshipped 
Him, saying, Lord, help me.'* On this He breaks the silence 
which hitherto He has maintained towards her; but it is 
with an answer more discomfortable than was even the 
silence itself: ‘ He answered and said. It is not meet to take 
the children's hread,^ and to cast it to dogs.^ ‘ The children 
are, of course, the Jews, ‘ the children of the kingdom ’ 
(cf. Matt. viii. 12). He who spoke so sharply to them, 
speaks thus honourably of them; nor is there any contra¬ 
diction in this: for here He is speaking of the position 
which God has given them in his kingdom; there, of the 
manner in which they have realized that position. On the 
other hand, extreme contempt was involved in the title of 
‘ dog ’ 2 given to any one, the nobler characteristics of this 
animal, although by no means unknown to antiquity, being 
never brought out in Scripture (see Deut. xxiii. 18; Job 
XXX. I; I Sam. xvii. 43 ; xxiv. 14 ; 2 Sam. iii. 8 ; ix. 8 ; xvi. 
9 ; 2 Kin. viii. 13 ; Isai. Ixvi. 3 ; Matt. vii. 6 ; Phil. iii. 2 ; 
Eev. xxii. 15). 

There are very few for whom this would not have been 
enough; few who, even if they had persevered thus far, 

^ Maldonatus: Habent canes panem suum minus delicatura, quam 
filii; res naturales, Sol, Luna, pluvia, et cetera idem genus canum, id est 
Gentilium, panis sunt; quae providentia quidem Dei, sed generali minus- 
que accurata dispensantur, et omnibus in commune, sicut porcis glandes, 
projiciuntur : Evangelica gratia, quge supra naturam est, panis estfiliorum 
non projiciendus temere, sed majore consilio rationeque distribuendus. 

* Many, as Maldonatus, find a further aggravation of the contempt in 
the Kvvapiotg (catellis, Vulg.), not even dogs, but whelps. But Olshausen, 
more justly, that in the diminutive lies a slight mitigation of the exceed¬ 
ing severity of the repulse; though the author of an article in the Theol. 
Stud, und Krit. 1870, p. 135 on this miracle, pushes this view further 
and builds more upon it than the facts will warrant. Calvin brings out 
'^.vell the force of the fiaXtlv: Projiciendi verbo utitur significando non 
bene locari, quod Ecclesiae Dei ablatum profanis hominibus vulgatur. 
Clarius exprimitur consilium Christi apud Marcum vii. 27, ubi habetur. 
Sine prius saturari filios. Nam Cananseam admonet praepostere facere, 
quae velut in media coena in mensam involat. 


364 THE HEALING OF THE DAUGHTER 


would not now at length have turned away in anger or 
despair. iN'ot so, however, this heathen woman; she, like 
the Eoman centurion (Matt. viii. 8), and under circum¬ 
stances infinitely more trying than his, is mighty in faith; 
and from the very word which seems to make most against 
her, draws with the ready wit of faith an argument in her 
own behalf. She entangles the Lord, Himself most willing 
to be so entangled, in his own speech; she takes the sword 
out of his own hand, with which to overcome Him : ^ 
^ Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumhs which fall from 
their masters* table! Upon these words Luther, who has 
dwelt on all the circumstances of this little history with a 
peculiar love, and is never weary of extolling the mighty 
faith of this woman, exclaims, ^Was not that a master¬ 
stroke ? she snares Christ in his own words.’ And often¬ 
times he sets this Canaanitish woman before troubled and 
fainting hearts, that they may learn from her how to 
wring a Yea from God’s Hay; or, rather, learn how to 
hear the deep-hidden Yea, which many times lurks under 
his seeming Hay. ^ Like her, thou must give God right in 
all He says against thee, and yet must not stand off from 
praying, till thou overcomest as she overcame, till thou 
hast turned the very charges made against thee into 
arguments and proofs of thy need, till thou too hast taken 
Christ in his own words.’ 

The rendering of her answer in our Version is not, 
however, altogether satisfactory. For, indeed, she accepts 
the Lord’s declaration, not immediately to make exception 
against the conclusion which He draws from it, but to 
show how in that very declaration is involved the granting 
of her petition.^ ^ Saidest Thou dogs ? it is well; I accept 

1 Corn, a Lapide : Christum suis verhis irretit, comprehendit, et capit. 
Kationem contra se factam in ipsum leniter retorquet. 

2 There is nothing adversative in kqI 7a|0=etenim (see Passow), to 
justify the ^yet' of our Version, or the ^nevertheless’ of Tyndale’s. 
Miclif, Cranmer, and the Ehemish Version have the right translation ; 
so too the Geneva: ‘Truth, Lord, for indeed the whelps eat of the 


OF THE SYROPIKENICIAN WOMAN. 365 

the title and the place; for the dogs have a portion of the 
meal,—not the first, not the children’s portion, bnt a 
portion still,—the crumbs which fall from the masters’ 
table. In this very putting of the case. Thou bringest us 
heathen. Thou bringest me, within the circle of the blessings 
which God, the great householder, is ever dispensing to 
his family. We also belong to his household, though we 
occupy but the lowest place therein.^ According to thine 
own showing, I am not wholly an alien, and therefore I 
will abide by this name, and will claim all which in it is 
included.’ By the ^ masters ’ she does not intend the Jews, 
which is the mistake of Chrysostom and many more; ^ for 
thus the whole image would be deranged and disturbed—■ 
they are ^ the children ’—but the great Heavenly house¬ 
holder Himself. She uses the plural, ^ masters,^ to corre¬ 
spond with the plural, ‘ dogs/ which Christ had used just 

crumbs 5 ’ as tbe Vulgate: Etiam, Domine, na 7 n et catelli eduut. So De 
Wette: Ja, Herr! denn es essen ja die Hunde. Maldouatus, always 
acute, and with merits as an interpreter, which, setting apart his bitter 
polemical spirit, deserve the highest recognition, has exactly caught the 
meaning here: Hoc est quod volo, me esse canem, warn et catelli comedunt 
de micis quae cadunt de mensa dominoriim suorum.—The ^ crumbs ’ are 
more than the accidental offal from the table: it was common at meals to 
use, instead of a napkin, the softer parts of the bread (aTroixaydaXia), 
which were afterwards thrown to the dogs ; Eustathius : Ei’g o rag 
drrofxarrofjtfvotj tlra Kvrriv t(3a\\ov (see Becker, Chartcles, vol. i. p. 431). 

^ Thauler, on these words {Homil. p. 162): Felices nimium vereque 
beatos, qui hoc pacto ad ipsissimum veritatis fundum pertingere possent, 
ita ut nec Dominus Deus nec creaturae omnes tantum eos dejicere, vili- 
pendere, et deprimere possent, quam ipsi in veritate sese multo amplius 
intra se absque fictione dejicerent, vilipenderent, deprimerentque; nec 
tantum eis vel Deus vel creaturae denegare, aut adeo eos repellere et 
dejicere valerent, quin semper stabiles perseverarent, plenaque cum fiducia 
magis ac magis Deo propinquare niterentur ,* et studium denique atque 
conatum suum non solum non reraitterent, sed intenderent etiam et 
augerent, instar feminae hujus, cui quam vis dure Dominus loqueretur, 
ipsa tamen minime cessit, nec quidquam fiduciae illius deposuit, quam erga 
divinam gerebat gratiam; ideoque tandem quod voluit adepta est, et 
quicqiiid postularat a Domino plenissime obtinuit. 

2 So Ludolphus {Vita Jesu Christi, pars c. 89): Vide mulieris 
patientiam et humilitatem. Deus enim vocat Judaeos filios, et ilia 
dominos; nec doluit de inimicorum laudibus, nec de suo molestata est 
convitio. 


366 THE HEALING OF THE DAUGHTER 

before; compare ^ sons ’ to correspond with ^ kings ’ at 
Matt. xvii. 26; while yet it is the one Son only, the Only- 
begotten of tbe Father, who is intended there. ^ He who 
fills all things living with plenteousness spreads a table for 
all flesh; and all that depend on Him are satisfied from it, 
each in his own order and place, the children at the table, 
and the dogs beneath it. There lies in her statement 
something like the Prodigal’s petition, ‘Make me as one 
of thy hired servants,—a recognition of diverse relations, 
some closer, some more distant, in which divers persons 
stand to God,—yet all blest, who, whether in a nearer or 
remoter station, receive their meat from Him. 

She has conquered at last. She, who before heard only 
those words of a seeming contempt, now hears words of a 
most gracious commendation,—words whose like are ad¬ 
dressed but to one other in all the Gospel history : ‘ 0 
woman, great is thy faith! ’ He who showed at first as 
though He would have denied her the smallest boon, now 
opens to her the full treasure-house of his grace, and bids 
her to help herself, to carry away what she will: ‘ Be it 
unto thee even as thou wiltl* He had shown to her for a 
while, as Joseph showed to his brethren, the aspect of 
severity; but, like Joseph, He could not maintain it long; 
—or rather He would mot maintain it an instant longer 
than was needful, and after, that word of hers, that mighty 
word of an undaunted faith, it was needful no more : ‘ For 
this saying go thy way ; the devil is gone out of thy daughter! 

^ Maldonatus: Loquitur pluraliter propter canes, quorum suum quisque 
dominum habet. 

^ Luther (^Enari'. m Gen. xxxii. 27) : Fuitprofecto pulcherrima etprse- 
clara tides, et insigne exemplum quod monstrat rationem et artificium 
luctandi cum Deo. Non enim ad primum ictum abjicere statim animum 
et omiiem spem debemus, sed instandum, orandum, quaerendum, pulsan- 
dum est. Et ut maxime fugam uieditetur, tamen tu ne cessa, sed sectare 
sedulo perinde ut mulier Cananaea faciebat, quam non poterat latere 
Christus, sed intravit, inquit Marcus (xii. 25), in domum, et procidit ad 
pedes ejus. Si enim in domo se abdit in cubiculum, nec vult cuiquam 
patetieri aditum, ne recedas tamen, sed sequere. Si non vult audire, 
pulsa fores cubiculi, obstrepe. Id enim e.>t summum sacriticium, non 
cessare orando et qucerendo, donee vincamus ipsum. 


OF THE SYROPHCENICIAN WOMAH, 367 

Like the centurion at Capernanm (Matt. viii. 13), like 
the nobleman at Cana (John iv. 53), she made proof that 
his word was as potent, spoken far off as near. She 
offered in her faith a channel of communication between 
her distant child and Christ. With one hand of that faith 
she laid hold on Him in whom all healing grace was 
stored, with the other on her suffering daughter,—herself 
a living conductor bj which the power of Christ might 
run, like an electric flash, from Him to the object of her 
love. ‘And when she was come to her house, she found the 
devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the hed,* weak 
and exhausted, as these last words would imply, from the 
paroxysms of the spirit’s going out;—unless, indeed, they 
indicate that she was now taking that quiet rest, which 
hitherto her condition had not allowed. It will then 
answer to the ‘ clothed and in his right mind ’ (Luke viii. 
35) of another who had been similarly tormented. 

The question remains, Why this anguish was not spared 
her, why the Lord should have presented Himself under so 
different an aspect to her, and to most other suppliants ? 
Sometimes He anticipated their needs, ‘ Wilt thou be 
made whole ? ’ (John v. 6); or if not so. He who was 
waiting to be gracious required not to be twice asked for 
his blessings. Why was it that in this case, to use the 
words of an old divine, Christ ‘ stayed long, wrestling with 
her faith, and shaking and trying whether it were fasfc- 
rooted ’ or no ? Doubtless because He saw in it a faith 
which would stand the proof, knew that she would emerge 
victorious from this sore trial; and not only so, but with a 
mightier and purer faith than if she had borne away her 
blessing at once and merely for the asking. How she has 
learned, as then she never could have learned, ^ that men 
ought always to pray, and not to faint;’ that when God 
delays a boon. He does not therefore deny it. She has 
learned the lesson which Moses must have learned, when 
‘ the Lord met him, and sought to kiU him ’ (Exod. iv. 24); 


368 the healing of the daughter 

slie has won the strength which Jacob won from his 
wrestling, till the day broke, with the Angel. There is, 
indeed, a remarkable resemblance between this history 
and that of Jacob (Gen. xxxii. 24-32). There, as here, we 
note the same persevering struggle on the one side, the 
same persevering refusal on the other; there, as here, the 
stronger is at last overcome by the weaker. God Himself 
yields to the might of faith and prayer; for a later 
prophet, interpreting that mysterious struggle, tells us the 
weapons which the patriarch wielded: ‘ he wept and made 
supplication unto Him,’ connecting with this the fact that 
‘he had power over the Angel, and prevailed’ (Hos. xii. 3,4). 
The two histories, indeed, only stand out in their full re¬ 
semblance, when we keep in mind that the Angel there, 
the Angel of the Covenant, was no other than that Word, 
who, now incarnate,^ ‘ blest ’ this woman at last, as He 
had blest at length Jacob at Peniel,—in each case so 
rewarding a faith which had said, ‘ I will not let Thee go,, 
except Thou bless me.’ 

Yet, when we thus speak of man overcoming God, we 
must never, of course, for an instant lose sight of this, 
that the power whereby he overcomes the resistance of 
God, is itself a power supplied by God. All that is man’s 
is the faith, or the emptiness of self, with the hunger after 
God, which enables him to appropriate and make so 
largely his own the fulness and power of God; so that 
here also that word comes true, ‘ Blessed are the poor in 
spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Thus when 
St. Paul speaks of himself under an image which rested 
originally on Jacob’s struggle, if there was not a direct 
allusion to it in the Apostle’s mind, as striving for the 
Colossians (Col. i. 29), striving,^ that is, with God in 

’ This has been doubted by some ; but see the younger Vitringa, Dtss. 
de Lucid JacoU, p. 18, seq., in his Diss. Sac.) and Deyling, Obss. Sac, 
p. 827, seq. 

* 'AyMviConfvoQ: cf. Col. ii, I, where Grotius says rightly, Per dywva 
intelligit non sollicitudinem tan turn, sed pieces assiduas. 


OF THE STROPHCENICIAN WOMAN. 369 


prayer (see iv. 12), he immediately adds, ‘according to his 
working, which worketh in me mightily.’ 

We may observe, in conclusion, that we have three 
ascending degrees of faith, as it manifests itself in the 
breaking through hindrances which would keep from 
Christ, in the paralytic (Mark ii. 4); in the blind man at 
Jericho (Mark x. 48); and in this woman of Canaan. The 
paralytic broke through the outward hindrances, the ob¬ 
stacles of things merely external; blind Bartimseus through 
the hindrances opposed by his feUow-men ; but this woman, 
more heroically than all, through apparent hindrances 
even from Christ Himself. These, in all their seeming 
weakness, were yet as three mighty ones, not of David, 
but of David’s Son and Lord, who forced their way through 
opposing hosts, until they could draw living water from 
wells of salvation (2 Sam. xxiii. 16). 


* 4 . the healing of one deaf and dumb. 


Make; yii. 31-37. 



T. MATTHEW tells us in general terms that when the 


^ Lord had returned from those coasts of Tyre and Si- 
don unto the sea of Galilee, ‘ great multitudes came unto 
Him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, 
maimed,^ and many others, and cast them down at Jesus’ 
feet, and He healed them ’ (xv. 30). Out of this number 
of cures St. Mark selects one to relate more in detail, and 
this, no doubt, because it was signalized by some circum¬ 
stances not usual in other like cases of healing. ‘ They 
bring unto Him one that was deaf and had an impediment in 
his speech,^ one who, if he was not altogether dumb, was 
yet incapable of making any articulate sounds.^ His case 

' KuXXoc, properly, crippled or maimed in the hand, as Jerome (in loc.) 
observes: Quomodo claudus dicitur, qui uno claudicat pede, sic'/cyXXoj; 
appellatur, qui unam maniim debilem babet. Nos proprietatem hujus 
verbi non babemus. We also bave no one equivalent word. It is tbe 
Italian monco. At Matt, xviii. 8 it is evidently ‘ maimed of tbe band,’ 
but does not here mean so much ,* for tbougb, of course, it lay in Christ’s 
power to supply a lost limb, yet we nowhere meet a miracle of this kind, 
neither should we expect to meet such; for He was come now, a Ke- 
deemer, that is a setter free of man in bis body and in bis soul from alien 
powers which held him in bondage—but not a Creator. Even in bis 
miracles which approach nearest to creation. He ever assumes a substratum 
on which to work. It is no limitation of this divine power of Christ, to 
suppose that it had thus a law according to which it wrought, and beyond 
which it did not extend; for this law is only the law of infinite fitness 
which it received from itself. 

2 Some make fioyiKaXog here mute, chiefly on account of the aXdXcvg of 
Ver. 37 ; and refer to Isai. XXXV. 6 (LXX), rpajn) U tarai yXSxraa fJoyiXdXojv, 
in proof; as also to Exod. iv. ii, where, though not the Septuagint, yet 
the three other Greek translations use this word in the sense of dumb. 
Yet the tXdXn opOoigof ver. 35 favours the meaning which the word more 


HEALING OF ONE DEAF AND DUMB. 371 


differs, apparently, from that of the dnmb man mentioned 
Matt. ix. 32 ; for while that man’s evil is traced np dis,^ 
tinctly and directly to a spiritual source, nothing of the 
kind is intimated here, nor are we, as Theophylact suggests, 
to presume such. Him his friends now brought to the great 
Healer, ^ and they beseech Him to put his hand upon himA 
But lu is not exactly in this way that He will heal him. 

It has been already observed, that there must lie a deep 
meaning in all the variations which mark the different 
healings of different sick and afflicted, a wisdom of God 
ordering aU the circumstances of each particular cure. 
Were we acquainted as accurately as He, who ‘ knew what 
was in man,’ with the spiritual condition of each who was 
brought within the circle of his gTace, we should then 
perfectly understand why one was healed in the crowd, 
another led out of the city ere the work of restoration was 
commenced; why for one a word effected a cure, for 
another a touch, while a third was sent to wash in the pool 
of Siloam ere ‘ he came seeing ; ’ why for this one the pro¬ 
cess of restoration was instantaneous, while another saw at 
first ‘ men as trees, walking.’ We are not for an instant 
to suppose in cures gradually accomplished any restraint 
on the power of the Lord, save such as He willingly im¬ 
posed on Himself,—and this, doubtless, in each case having 
reference to, and being explicable by, the moral and spiri¬ 
tual state of the person who was passing under his hands. 
It is true that our ignorance prevents us from at once and 
in every case discerning ‘the manifold wisdom’ which 
ordered each of his proceedings, but we are not less sure 
that this wisdom ordered them all.* 


naturally suggests, and our Translation has given. He was 
dynv\6y\io(7<T()c, halbutiens, could make no intelligible sounds; but waa 
not absolutely dumb; cf, Isai. xxxii. 4 (LXX) : at yXwatrat ai ^iWi^ovnat. 

1 Maldonatus: Videtur etiam voluisse Christus non semper sequaliter 
euam divinitatera potentiamque declarare, quod non semper, etiamsi nos 
causa lateat, convenire judicaret. Aliquando solo verbo dsemones ejicit, 
mortuos exsuscitat, ostendens so cmnino esse Deum; aliquando tactu, 


372 


THE HEALING OF 


On the present occasion He first ^ tooTz him aside from 
the multitude ’ whom He would heal; compare Mark viii. 
23 : ^ He took the blind man bj the hand, and led him out 
of the town.’ But with what intent does He isolate him 
thus ? The Greek Bathers generally reply, for the avoid¬ 
ing of all show and ostentation. But this cannot be, since 
of all the miracles which He did, we have only two in 
which any such withdrawal is recorded. Shall we say that 
there was show and ostentation in all the others ? It is 
not much better to answer, with Calvin, that He might pray 
with greater freedom.^ He, whose life was altogether 
prayer, needed not solitude for this. His purpose was, 
rather, that the man apart from the tumult and interrup¬ 
tions of the crowd, in solitude and silence, might be more 
receptive of deep and lasting impressions ; even as the same 
Lord does now oftentimes lead a soul apart, sets it in the 
solitude of a sick chamber, or in loneliness of spirit, or 
takes away from it earthly companions and friends, when 
He would speak with it, and heal it. He takes it aside, 
as He took this deaf and dumb out of the multitude, that 
in the hush of the world’s din it may listen to Him ; as on 
a greater scale He took his elect people aside into the 
wilderness, when He would first open their spiritual ear, 
and deliver unto them his law. 

Having this done, Christ ^ jput his finger into his ears, and 
He spit and touched his tonguel These are symbolic ac¬ 
tions, which it is easy to see why He should have em¬ 
ployed in the case of one afflicted as this man was;— 
almost all other avenues of communication,'save these of 
sight and feeling, were of necessity closed. Christ by 
these signs would awaken his faith, and stir up in him the 
lively expectation of a blessing. The fingers are put into 
the ears as to bore them, to pierce through the obstacles 

ealiva, luto, sanat segrotos, accommodans quodammodo potentiam suam 
ad niodum agendi causarum naturalium, et ad sensum et consuetudinera 
hominum. 

^ Ut precaudi ardorem liberius effundat. 


0N:E deaf AMD DUMB. 


373 


wliicli liindered sounds from reacliing tlie seat of liearing. 
This was the fountain-evil; he did not speak plainly, be¬ 
cause he did not heav, this defect, therefore, is first re¬ 
moved.' Then, as often through excessive dryness the 
tongue cleaves to the roof of the mouth, the Lord gives 
here, in what next He does, the sign of the removal of this 
evil, of the unloosing of the tongue. And, at the same 
time, the healing virtue He shows to reside in his own body; 
He looks not for it from any other quarter; but with the 
moisture of his own mouth upon his finger touched the 
tongue which He would release from the bands which held 
it fast (cf. John ix. 6). It is not for its medicinal virtue 
that use is made of this, but as the apt symbol of a power 
residing in, and going forth from, his body.^ 

St. Mark, abounding as he does in graphic touches, re¬ 
producing before our eyes each scene which he narrates, 
tells us of the Lord, how this doing, ^ and looking up to 
heaven. Me sighed.'^ He has further preserved for us the 
very word which He spake, in the very language in which 
He spake it; He ‘ saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is. Be 
opened.'^ The ^ looking up to heaven ’ was a claiming of the 
divine help; or rather, since the fulness of divine power 
abode permanently in Him, and not by fitful visitation as 
in others, an acknowledgment of his oneness with the 
Father, and that He did no other things save those which 
He saw the Father do (cf. Matt. xiv. 19 ; John xi. 41, 42). 
Some explain the words ^ Me sighed,^ or ^ Me groaned,^ 
which are the words in the Ehemish Version, as the deep 
voice of prayer in which He was at the moment engaged; 
but rather we suppose that this poor helpless creature now 

* Grotius: Seepe Christus externo aliquo signo inadspectabilem effica- 
ciam velut spectandam exhibebat. Ita digitis in aures immissis, in’iga- 
taque lingua, testatum fecit se eum esse cujus vi clausi meatus quasi 
perterebrarentur, et lingua palato adhaerescens motum recuperaret. 

* Grotius: Nec alio hoc referendum mihi videtur quam quo superiora, 
ut hoc quoque indicio ostenderetur ab ipso Jesu prodiisse hanc salutiferam 
virtutem, cum nihil admotum esset affecto corpori, printer ipsa quteipsiua 
Jesu erant propria. 


374 


THE HEALING OF 


brought before Him, this living proof of the wreck which 
sin had brought about, of the malice of the devil in deform¬ 
ing the fair features of God’s original creation, then wrung 
that groan from his heart. He that always felt, was yet 
now in his human soul touched with a liveliest sense of the 
miseries of the race of man.^ Thus on another still greater 
occasion, ‘He groaned in the spirit and was troubled’ 
(John xi. 33), with a trouble which had in like manner its 
source in the thought of the desolation which sin and death 
had effected. As there the mourning hearts which were 
before Him were but a sampler of the mourners of all times 
and all places, so was this poor man of all the variously 
afflicted and greatly suffering children of Adam.^ In 
the preservation of the actual Aramaic ^ Ephphatha/ 
which Christ spoke, as in the ‘ Talitha cumi ’ of Mark v. 
14, we recognize the narrative of an eye and ear-witness. 
It is quite in this Evangelist’s manner to give the actual 
Aramaic words which Christ used, but adding in each 
case their interpretation (iii. 17; v. 41; vii. ii; xiv. 
36 ; XV. 34; cf. X. 46 ; xv. 22). He derived, as there can 
be little doubt, his account from St. Peter, on whose me¬ 
mory the words of power, which opened the ears, and loosed 
the tongue, and raised the dead, had indelibly impressed 
themselves.^ 

* Chrysostom (in Cramer, Catena): Ti/v tov dj’OpuiTrov (pvaiv i\tSiv dg 
TToiav Tantivuiaiv r/yayiv ravTrjv o Tt fiiaoKaXog didjSoXogj Kal rj tSiv TTjOwro- 
TrXdoTwv UTTpocf^ia. 

* In the exquisite poem in The Christian Year which these words have 
suggested, this sigh is somewhat differently understood: 

‘ The deaf may hear the Saviour’s voice, 

The fetter’d tongue its chain may break \ 

.But the deaf heart, the dumb by choice. 

The la2:gard soul that will not wake, 

The guilt that scorns to be forgriven ;— 

These baffle even the spells of Heaven; 

In th<^ught of these his brows benism, 

Not even in healing, cloudless shine.* 

* Grotius: Haec autem vox Ephphatha simul cum saliva et tactu aurium 
ac lingua) ex hoc Christi facto ad Baptismi ritus postea translata sunt, ut 


ONE DEAF AND DUMB. 


375 


The injunction, ‘ He charged them that they should tell no 
man,\ implies that the friends of this afflicted man had 
accompanied or followed Jesns out of the crowd, and 
having been witnesses of the cure, were now included with 
him in the same command that they should not divulge 
what had been done. On the reasons which induced the 
Lord so often to give this charge of silence something has 
been said already. On this, as on other occasions (see 
Matt. ix. 31; Mark i. 44, 45), the charge is nothing re¬ 
garded by those on whom it is laid; ‘ the more He charged 
them, so much the more a great deal they published it.^ The 
exclamation in which men’s surprise and admiration finds 
utterance, ‘ He hath done all things well/ reminds us of 
the words of the first creation (Gen. i. 31 *), upon which we 
are thus not unsuitably thrown back, for Christ’s work is 
in the highest sense ‘ a new creation.’ The concluding 
notice, ‘ They glorified the God of Israel,^ implies that 
many of those present were heathens, as we should natu¬ 
rally expect in that half-hellenized region of Decapolis, 
where this miracle was wrought, and that these, beholding 
the mighty works which were done, confessed that the 
God who had chosen Israel for his own possession was 
above all gods. 

significaretur non minus interna mentis impedimenta tolli per Spirikim 
Christi, quam in isto homine sublata fuerant sensuum impedimenta. Nam 
et cor dicitur ^lavoiyeaOai, Act. xvi. 14. Imo et cordi aures tribuuntur. 
The rite to which Grotius refers survives only in the Church of Rome. 
The touching by the priest of the nostrils and ears of one about to be 
baptized, with moisture from his mouth, had its origin here; as is indi¬ 
cated by the Epheta, which he used at the same time. Ambrose addresses 
the catechumens thus (Z)e Liit. i): Aperite igitur aures, et bonum 
odorem vitse seternae inhalatum vobis munere sacramentorum carpite, 
quod vobis signifcavimus, cmn. apertionis celebrantesmysterium diceremus 
Epheta, quod est, Adaperire; ut venturus unusquisque ad gratiam, quid 
interrogaretur cognosceret, quid responderet, meminisse deberet. Cf. the 
work, Be Sacrum, i. I, attributed to him. 

* Here KaAug Travra 'KETcoirjKe : there irdvra baa eTrotijae, /ca^a Mav. 


t5. THE MIRACULOUS FEEDING OF FOUR THOUSAND. 
Matt. xv. 32-39; Mark viii. 1-9. 


A lmost all wLicli mlglit be said upon this miracle, the 
preceding one in the same kind (Matt. xiv. 15) has 
anticipated already; to which therefore the reader is re¬ 
ferred.^ Whether this was wrought nearly in the same 
region, namely, in the desert country belonging to Beth- 
saida,^ and not rather on the western, as the former on the 
eastern, side of the lake, has been sometimes debated. On 
the whole it is most probable that the scene of it was 
almost the same; for thither the narrative of St. Mark 
appears to have brought the Lord. Leaving the coasts of 
Tyre and Sidon after the healing of the daughter of the Syro- 
phoenicia^n woman, He is reported to have again reached the 
sea of Galilee, and this through the midst of the coasts of 
Decapolis (vii. 31). But all the cities of theDecapolis save 
one lay beyond Jordan, and on the eastern side of the lake; 
this notice therefore places Him on the same side also. The 
fact that immediately after the miracle He took ship and 
came to the region of Magdala (Matt. xv. 39), points the 
same way; since Magdala was certainly on the western 

* Augustine (Be Cons. Evang. ii. 50) observes well that if this miracle 
had been recorded by Evangelists who had not recorded the similar 
miracle preceding, and by no other, there would inevitably have been 
some who, assuming the several narratives to be records of one and the 
same event, would have found here more discrepancies than one between 
the several Gospels; and he takes occasion hereupon to lay down an 
important canon of Scripture interpretation; see Archdeacon Lee, Inspi-' 
ration of Holy Scripture, 3rd edit. p. 394. 

* Not Bethsaida, Uhe city of Andrew and Peter,’ but the Bethsaida 
already mentioned, p. 279. 


FEEDING OF FOUR THOUSAND, 377 

side, and He more probably took skip to cross the lake than 
to coast along its shores.* 

With many points of likeness, there are also some 
points of nhlikeness in the two miracles. Here the people 
had continued with the Lord three days, while on the 
former occasion nothing of the kind is noted; the pro¬ 
vision too is somewliat larger, ^ seven loaves and a few 
little fishes’ instead of five loaves and two fishes; while 
the number fed is somewhat smaller, four thousand now 
instead of the five thousand then ; and the remaining frag¬ 
ments in this case fill but seven baskets, while in the 
former they had filled twelve.^ It does not need to observe 

^ St. Mark, wlio for Magdala substitutes Dalmanutba, does not help us 
here, as there are no further traces of this place. That it was on the 
western side of the lake we conclude from the fact that Christ’s leaving 
it and crossing the lake is described as a departing tig to ^nspav, an ex¬ 
pression in the New Testament applied almost exclusively to the country 
east of the lake and of Jordan. In some maps, in Lightfoot’s for instance, 
Magdala is placed at the S.E. of the lake ; hut this is a mistake, 
passages which he himself quotes from Jewish writers {CTioroyraph. 76), 
showing plainly that it was close to Tiberias. It is most probably the 
modern El-Madschdel, lying on the S.W. of the lake, and in the neigh¬ 
bourhood of the city just named. So Greswell, Dissert, vol. ii. p. 324; 
Winer, Realwdrterhuch, s. v. Magdala; Kobinson, Biblical Researches, 
vol. iii. p. 278. 

2 All four Evangelists, in narrating the first miracle, describe the 
baskets which were filled with the remaining fragments as KO(pivovQ, 
while the two who relate the second no less agree in using there the term 
anvpibac. That this variation was not accidental is clear from our Lord’s 
after words; when referring to the two miracles. He preserves the dis¬ 
tinction, asking his disciples how many Ko^irovg on the first occasion they 
gathered up; how many an-vpiSag on the second (Matt. xvi. 9, 10 ; Mark 
viii. 19, 20). What the distinction was, is more difficult to say. The 
derivation of KocpLvog from KOTrno (=dyytToj/ TrXiKrov, Suidas), and mtvpig 
from (TTTfJpa, does not help us, as each points to the baskets being of 
wicker-work; see, however, another derivation of anvoig in Greswell 
(Disse?! vol. ii. p. 358), and the distinction which he seeks to draw from 
it. Whp the Apostles should have been provided with the one or the 
other has been variously explained. Some say, to carry their own pro¬ 
visions with them, while they were travelling through a polluted land, 
such as Samaria. Greswell rather supposes, that they might sleep in 
them, so long as they were compelled to lodge sub dio ; and quotes 
Juvenal {Sat. iii. 13) : Judseis, quorum cophinus foenumque supellex; cf. 
Martial {Epigr. v. 7), who mockingly calls the Jews cistiferos. It 
appears from Acts ix. 25 that the a-n-vplg might be of size sufficient to 
contain a man: compare Blunt, Undesigned Coincidences, 1847, p. 271. 


3/8 


THE MIRACULOUS FEEDING 


that these trivial differences do not in the slightest measure 
affect the miraculous element in this work of power. 

' At first it excites some surprise that the disciples, with 
that other miracle fresh in their memories, should on this 
second occasion have been as seriously perplexed how the 
multitude should be fed as they were on the first. Yet 
this sui-prise rises out of our ignorance of man’s heart, of 
our own heart, and of the deep root of unbelief which is 
there. It is evermore thus in times of difficulty and dis¬ 
tress. All former deliverances are in danger of being for¬ 
gotten ; ^ the mighty interpositions of God’s hand in former 
passages of men’s lives fall out of their remembrance; 
each new difficulty appears as one from which there is no 
extrication; at each recurring necessity it seems as though 
the wonders of God’s grace were exhausted and have come 
utterly to an end. He may have divided the Eed Sea for 
his people, yet no sooner are they on the other side, than 
because there is no water to drink, they murmur against 
Moses, and count that they must perish for thirst, crying, 
‘Is the Lord among us, or not’ (Exod. xvii. 1-7) ? or, to 
adduce a still nearer parallel. He who opens his hand 
and fills all things living with plenteousness may have 
once already covered the camp with quails (Exod. xvi. 13), 
yet for all this even Moses himself cannot believe that He 
will provide flesh for all that multitude (Num. xi. 21, 22). 
It is only the man of a full-formed faith, of a faith which 
Apostles themselves at this time did not possess, who 
argues from the past to the future, and truly derives confi¬ 
dence from God’s former dealings of faithfulness and love 
(cf. I Sam. xvii. 34-37 ; 2 Chron. xvi. 7, 8). Nothing 
then but a strange unacquaintance with the heart of man 
could have led any to argue that the disciples, with their 
previous experience of one miracle of this kind, could not 

' Calvin: Quia autem siniilis quotidie nobis obrepit torpor, eo magis 
cavondum est ne unquam distrahantur mentes nostrae a reputandis Dei 
beneficiis, ut praeteriti temporis experientia in futurum idem nos sperare 
doceat, quod jam semel vel saepius largitus est Deus. 


CF FOUR THOUSAND. 


379 


a a second similar occasion liave been perplexed bow tbe 
wants of tbe mnltitude should be supplied; tbat we bave 
therefore here an illustration of tbe general inaccuracy 
which prevails in tbe records of our Lord’s life, of a loose 
tradition, which has told the same event twice over. 

Moreover this perplexity of theirs is capable of another 
explanation. Could it not easily have happened that the 
disciples, perfectly remembering how their Master had 
once spread a table in the wilderness, and fully persuaded 
that He could do it again, might still doubt whether He 
would choose a second time to put forth his creative might; 
•—whether there was in these present multitudes that 
spiritual hunger, which was worthy of being met and 
rewarded by such an interposition of divine power; whether 
they too were seeking the kingdom of heaven and its 
righteousness, and might thus claim to have all other 
things, those also which pertain to this lower life, added 
unto them?^ But such earnest seekers, for the time at 
least, they were; and as others had faith to be healed, so 
these had faith to be fed; and the same bounteous hand 
which fed the five thousand before, fed the four thousand 
now. 

^ It is at least an ingenious allegpry which Augustine proposes, namely 
that these two miracles severally set forth Christ’s communication of 
Himself to the Jew and to the Gentile : that as the first is a parable of 
the Jewish people finding in Him the satisfaction of their spiritual need, 
so this second, in which the people came from far, even from the far 
country of idols, is a parable of the Gentile world. The details of his 
application may be of no very great value; but the perplexity of the 
Apostles here concerning the supply of the new needs, notwithstanding 
all that they had already witnessed, will then exactly answer to the 
8lowne,ss with which they, as the ministers of the new Kingdom, recog¬ 
nized that Christ was as freely given to, and was as truly the portion of, 
the Gentile as the Jew. This sermon the Benedictine Edd. relegate to 
the Appendix (^Serm. Ixxxi.), but the passage about Eutyches may easily 
be, indeed evidently is, an interpolation; and the rest is so entirely in 
Augustine’s manner, that I have not hesitated to refer to it as his. 
Hilary had before him suggested the same: Sicut autem ilia turba 
quam prius pavit, Judaicae credentium convenit turbae, ita haec populo 
gentium comparatur. 

17 


a6. THE OPENING THE EYES OF ONE BLIND AT 
BETHSAIDA. 


Make: yiii. 22-26. 


MIEACLB peculiar to St. Mark, and in many of 



its circumstances closely resembling another, which 
he has recorded a little while before (vii. 31-37), and 
which also is exclusively his. It thus in its most impor¬ 
tant features has been treated of already. As the Lord 
took that other sufferer, of whom the same Evangelist 
alone keeps a record, ‘ aside from the multitude’ (vii. 33), 
even so ‘ FLe toolc the hlind 'man hy the hand, and led him 
out of the town ; ’ ^ and with the same moisture from his 
own mouth wrought his cure. The Lord, as was so often 
his custom, veiling more or less the miraculous in the 
miracle, links on his power to means already in use among 
men; working through these means something higher 
than they could themselves have produced, and clothing 
the supernatural in the forms of the natural. Thus did 
He, for example, when He bade his disciples to anoint the 
sick with oil,—one of the most esteemed helps for healing 
in the East (Mark vi. 13; cf. Jam. v. 14). Not the oil, 
but his word, should heal; yet without the oil the dis¬ 
ciples might have found it too hard to believe in the power 
which they were exerting,—those who could only be healed 
through their faith, to believe in the power which should 
heal them. So the figs laid on Hezekiah’s boil w^ere indeed 

' Bengel: Casco visum recuperanti laetior erat aspectus cseli et operum 
divinorum in natura, quam operum liumanorum in pago. 


OPENING THE EYES OF ONE BLIND. 381 


tlie very remedy which, a physician with only natural 
appliances at command would have used (Isai. xxxviii, 
22 ; cf. 2 Kin. ii. 20, 21); yet now, hiding itself behind 
this nature, clothing itself in the forms of this nature, an 
effectual work of preternatural healing went forward. 

The feature which most distinguishes this miracle is 
the progressive character of the cure. This, it is true, is 
not itself without analogies in other cases, as in that of 
the man blind from his birth, who only after he had washed 
in Siloam, ‘ came seeing ’ (John ix. 7) ; yet the steps of 
the progress are marked with greater emphasis here than 
in any other instance. Tor, first, after the Lord ^Tiad 
spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, He ashed him 
if he saw aught. And he looked up, and said, I see men, as 
trees, walking.^ Certain moving forms he saw about him, 
but without the power of discerning their shape or mag¬ 
nitude,—trees he should have accounted them from their 
height, and men from their motion.^ But the good Phy¬ 
sician leaves not his work unfinished : ‘ After that He piit 
his hands again upon his eyes,^ and made him look up ; and 
he was restored, and saw every man clearly.^ 

Chrysostom and others find the explanation of this gra¬ 
dual cure, in the imperfection of this blind man’s faith. 
Proof of this imperfection they see in the fact, that, while 
others in a like calamity did themselves beseech the Lord 
that He would open their eyes, this man was brought to 
Him by others, as one who himself scarcely expected a 
benefit. The gracious Lord, who would not reject, but 

^ In Cheselden’s interesting account {Anatomy, p. 301, London, 1768) 
of the experience of one who, having been blind from his birth, was 
enabled to see, a curious confirmation of the truthfulness of this narrative 
occurs : ^When he first saw, he knew not the shape of anything, nor any 
one thing from another, however different in shape or magnitude j but 
being told what things were, whose forms he before knew from feeling, 
he would carefully observe, that he might know them again.’ 

* Chemnitz {Harm. Evany. 84) : Manus imponit ut ostendat carnem 
suam esse instrumentum per quod et cum quo ipse 6 Koyog seterniis omnia 
opera vivificationis perficiat. 


OPENING THE EYES 


382 

wlio could as little cure, so long as tliere was on his paid; 
this desperation of healing, vouchsafed to him a glimpse of 
the blessing, that He might awaken in him a longing for 
its fulness, and, this longing once awakened, presently 
satisfied him with that fulness. To the rest of the world, 
this healing step by step is a testimony of the freeness of 
God’s grace, which is linked to no single way of manifes¬ 
tation, but works in divers manners, sometimes accom¬ 
plishing only little by little what at other times it brings 
about in a moment.* And certainly no symbol more suit¬ 
able could be found of the progressive steps by which He 
who is ^ the Light of the world ’ makes sometimes the 
s :>uls that come to Him partakers of the illumination of 
his grace. Hot all at once are the old errors and the old 
confusions put to flight; not all at once do they see clearly: 
for a while there is much of their old blindness remaining, 
much for a season impairing their vision ; they see men but 
as trees, walking. Yet in good time Christ completes the 
work which He has begun. ^ The author,’ He is also ‘ the 
finisher of their faith ; ’ He lays his hands on them anew, 
and they see every man clearly.^ 

‘ And He sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go 
into the town, nor tell it to any in the town ’ (cf. Matt. ix. 
30; Mark i. 44; viL 36). The first of these commands 
seems to contain, and in fact does contain, the second; 

^ Calvin : Paulatim cseco visum restituit: quod ideo factum esse pro- 
babile est, ut documentum in hoc homine statueret liberae suce dispensa- 
tionis, nec se astrictum esse ad certam normam, quin hoc vel illo modo 
virtutem suam proferret. Oculos ergo cseci non statim ita illuminat ut 
officio suo fungantur, sed obscurum illis confusumque intuitum instillat: 
deinde altera manuum impositione integram aciem illis reddit. Ita gra¬ 
tia Christi, quae in alios repente effusa prius erat, quasi guttatim defluxit 
in hunc hominem. 

2 Bede: Quern imo verbo totum simul curare poterat, paulatim curat, 
ut magnitudinem humanae caecitatis ostendat, quae vix et quasi per 
gradus ad lucem redeat, et gratiam suam nobis indicet, per quam singula 
perfectionis incrementa adjiivat. Quod autem eum in domum ire 
praecepit, mystice admonet omnes qui cognitione veritatis illustrantur, 
ut ad cor suum redeant, et quantum sibi donatum sit sollicita mente 
perpendant. 


OF ONE BLIND. 383 

for if he did not ^ go into the town, it is certain he could 
not ^ tell it to any in the town ; ’ but St. Mark loves em¬ 
phatic statements of this kind, and hj such repetitions to 
secure a strong impression on the minds of his readers. 
Whether on this occasion the Lord was better obe^^ed 
than on so many others, we are not told. 


%7. THU HEALING OF THE LUNATIC CHILD, 
Matt. xvii. 14-21; Maek ix. 14-29; Luke ix. 37-42. 


rilHE old adversaries of our Lord, tlie Scribes, bad taken 
advantage of bis absence on tbe Mount of Trans¬ 
figuration, to win a temporary triumph over sucb of bis 
disciples as He bad left behind Him. These bad under¬ 
taken to cast out an evil spirit of a peculiar malignity, 
and bad proved unequal to tbe task; ‘ they could not ’— 
weakened as they were by tbe absence of their Lord; and 
wdtb Him, of three, tbe cbiefest among themselves—tbe 
three in whom, as habitually tbe nearest to Him, we may 
suppose bis power most mightily resided. It was here 
again, as it was once before during tbe absence of Moses 
with bis servant Joshua, on bis mount of a fainter trans¬ 
figuration (Exod. xxxiv. 29). Then, too, in like manner, 
tbe enemy, profiting by bis absence, awhile prevailed 
against tbe people (Exod. xxxii.). And now tbe Scribes 
were pressing to tbe uttermost tbe advantage which they 
bad gained by this miscarriage of tbe disciples. A great 
multitude were gathered round, spectators of tbe defeat of 
Christ’s servants ; and the strife was at tbe highest,—tbe 
Scribes, no doubt, arguing from the impotence of tlie 
servants to tbe impotence of tbe Master,^ and these denying 
tbe conclusion; when suddenly He about whom tbe strife 
was, appeared, returning from tbe holy Mount, bis face 
and person yet glistening, as there is reason to suppose, 

^ Calvin: Scribse victores insultant, nec modo subsannant discipiilos, 
Bed proterviunt adversus Cbristum, quasi in illorum persona exinanita 
esset ejus virtiis. 


THE HEALING OF THE LUNATIC CHILD. 385 


witli traces of tlie glory wliicli had clothed Him there,— 
and which had not quite faded yet into the light of 
common day. But very different was the impression which 
that glory made from the impression made by the counte¬ 
nance of Moses. When the multitude saw the lawgiver of 
the elder Covenant, as he came down from his mountain, 
the skin of his face shining, ^ they were afraid to come 
nigh him ’ (Exod. xxxiv. 30); for that glory upon his face 
was a threatening glory, the awful and intolerable brightness 
of the law. But the glory of God shining in the face of 
Christ Jesus, though awful too, is also an attractive glory, 
full of grace and beauty; it draws men to Him, does not 
drive them from Him; and thus, indeed, ‘ all the people, 
when they heheld Him, were greatly amazed,^ such gleams of 
brightness arrayed Him still; yet did they not therefore flee 
from Him, but rather, as being the more allured by that 
brightness, ^running to Him, saluted Him’^ (cf. 2 Cor. iii. 18). 

Yet the sights and sounds which greeted Him on his 
return to our sinful world, how different were they from 
those which He had just quitted upon the holy Mount! 
There the highest harmonies of heaven; here some of the 
wildest and harshest discords of earth.^ There He had 
been receiving from the Father honour and glory (2 Pet. 
i. 17); here his disciples, those to whom his work had 
been intrusted in his absence, had been procuring for 
Him, as far as in them lay, shame and dishonour. But as 

^ Bengel with his usual beauty: Tangebantur a gloria, etiamsi nescirent 
quid in monte actum essetj cf. Marc. x. 32; Luc. xix. ii; nec non Ex. 
iv. 14; xxxiv. 29. Occultam cum Deo conversationem facile sentias ma- 
jorem hominum erga te proclivitatem insequi. Theophylact mentions, 
though he does not adopt, this explanation: Tivkg Si tpaaiv on t) c->pig avrov 
cjpaiorspa yivopkvt} airb rov fiOTog Trjg perapopcpcjafojc, t(p(i\Ksro Tovg ox^ovg 

npbg rb ciaTraZtadai. Corn, a Lapide: Quod viderent in vultu Jesu paulo 
ante transfigurato reliquos adhuc aliquos splendoris radios, sicut Mosi 
post Dei colloquium in vultu adhseseriint radii, et quasi cornua lucis. 

* These mighty and wondrous contrasts have been embodied by 
Christian Art. In them lies the idea of Eaphael’s great picture of 
the Transfiguration, and its two parts, which in these their contrasts 
80 marvellously sustain one another. 


386 


TUB HEALING OF. 


when some great captain, suddenly arriving upon a battle¬ 
field, where his subordinate lieutenants have wellnigh lost 
the day and brought all into an almost hopeless confusion, 
with his eye measures at once the necessities of the 
moment, and with no more than his presence causes the 
tide of victory to turn, and everything to right itself 
again, so was it now. The Lord arrests the advancing 
and victorious foe : He addresses Himself to the Scribes; 
with the words, ‘ What question ye with them ? ’ taking the 
baffled and hard-pressed disciples under his own protection, 
and declaring that whatever question there was more, it 
must be with Himself. The Scribes, so forward to dispute 
with the servants, do not so readily accept the challenge 
of the Master. The disciples are as little forward to 
proclaim their own failure; and thus ‘ one of the multitude,'^ 
the father of the poor child on whom the ineffectual 
attempt at healing had been made, is the first to speak; 
‘ hneeling doivn to Him, and saying, Lord, have mercy on my 
son ; ’ and with this declaring the miserable case of his 
child, and the little help he had obtained from the disciples. 

St. Mark paints the whole scene with the hand of a 
master, and his account of this miracle, compared with 
those of the other Evangelists, would alone sufflee to 
vindicate for him* an original character, and to refute the 
notion of some, that we have in his Gospel nothing more 
than an epitome and abridgement, now of the first, and 
now of the third. ^ All the symptoms, as put into the 

1 Even Augustine consents too far to this unworthy estimate of the 
second Gospel (Be Cons. Evang. i. 2): Divus Marcus eum [Matthseum] 
suhsequutus, tanquam pedissequus et hreviator ejus videtur. He has 
enough of perfectly independent notices, his and his only, to justify our 
claim of quite another position for him and for his Gospel. I subjoin 
references to some of these: i. 13, 20, 29, 35; ii. 3, 14, 27 j iii. 5^ 17, 34; 
iv. 26-29, 36, 38; v. 4, 13, 20, 4 ^, 43; w- 13, 40, 43 ; 48; vii. 3 ^- 37 ; 
Tiii. 14, 22-26; ix. 49; X. 16, 17, 21, 46, 50 ; xi. 16, 20, 21; xiii. 3, 32; 
xiv. 51, 52; XV. 21, 44; xvi. 7, 16-18. Let me add that, as all those 
who have followed up the latest investigations of German scholars into 
the origin of the Gospels, and their relations one to another, are aware, 
there is a growing tendency at the present date (1869) to ascribe the very 
highest importance to the Gospel of St. Mark, and sometimes at the ex^ 


THE LUNATIC CHILD. 


387 

father’s mouth, or described by the sacred historians, 
exactly agree with those of epilepsy;—not that we have 
here only an epileptic ; but this was the ground on which 
the deeper spiritual evils of this child were superinduced. 
The fits were sudden and lasted remarkably long; the evil 
spirit ^ hardly departeth from him ; ’—‘ a dumb spirit/ St. 
Mark calls it, a statement which does not contradict that 
of St. Luke, ‘ he suddenly crieth out ; ’ this dumbness was 
only in respect of articulate sounds; he could give no 
utterance to these. Nor was it a natural defect, as where 
the string of the tongue has remained unloosed (Mark viii. 
32), or the needful organs for speech are wanting; nor yet 
a defect under which he had always laboured; but the 
consequence of this possession. When the spirit took him 
in its might, then in these paroxysms of his disorder it 
tare him, till he foamed ^ and gnashed with his teeth: and 
altogether he pined away like one the very springs of 
whose life were dried up.^ And while these accesses of 

pense of the other Gospels. Thus see Klostermann, Das Marcusevangelium 
tiach seinem Quellemverthe, 1867; Scholten, Das alteste Emngelium, Leyden, 
1868. 

^ Lucian (Philopseudes, 16) has ironical allusions, as I must needs 
think, to this and other cures of demoniacs hy our Lord : Tldi^reg ’ioamv 
Tov 2u|0ov Tov t/c Ti}Q HaXaifTTivijCf Tov tTri tovtojv (TO(j)i(TTr)v^ oaovg TrapaXajiujv 
KarmriiTTovTaQ irpoq tt^v (reXrjVTjv kuI rw Siaarps^ovrag Kal cKppov 

TrifiTrXniJisvovg to croga ogojg dviaTrjm Kal aTroTrsfXTrei dpriovg bttI giaOtp 

aTraXXd^ag tojv dnvu)v. There is much of interest in the passage, besides 
what I have quoted. 

2 If indeed ^tipalvsTai has not reference to the stiffness and starkness, 
the unnatural rigidity of the limbs, in the accesses of the disorder; cf. 
2 Kin. xiii. 4, LXX. Such, though not its primary, might well be its 
secondary, meaning ; since that which is dried vp loses its pliability, and 
the father is describing not the general pining away of his son, but his 
symptoms when the paroxysm took him. The crtXjjt/ia^ogtvoi (in other 
Greek (T4X?jj'toKo/, aeXrjvojSXtjroi^ are mentioned once besides in the New 
Testament (Matt. iv. 24), where they are distinguished from the daigovi- 
logtvoi. The distinction, whatever it was, in the popular language would 
continually disappear; and the father saying of his son aiXi]vidlf.Tat does 
but express the fact, or rather the consequence, of his possession. The 
word, like gavla (from gnvt]) and lunaticus, originally embodied the belief, 
not altogether unfounded, of the evil influence of the moon (Ps. cxxi. 6) 
on the human frame (see Creuzer, Symholik, vol. ii. p. 571). 


THE HEALING OF 


388 

his disorder might come upon him at any moment and in 
any place, they often exposed him to the worst accidents : 
‘ ofttimes hefalleth into the fire, and oft into the water.^ In 
St. Mark the father attributes these fits to the direct 
agency of the evil spirit: ‘ ofttimes it hath cast him into the 
fire, and into the waters, to destroy him ; ^ yet such calamities 
might equally be looked at as the natural consequences of 
his unhappy condition.^ 

The father concludes his sad tale with a somewhat 
reproachful reference to the futile , efforts of the disciples to 
aid him; and declares what impotent exorcists they had 
proved: * I spaJce to thy disciples that they should cast him 
out, and they could noV We have two explanations of 
our Lord’s words of sorrowful indignation which follow, 
‘ 0 faithless generation, how long shall I he with you ? how, 
long shall I suffer you ? ’ For some, as for Origen, this faith¬ 
less generation ’ is the disciples, and they only; and this an 
utterance of holy impatience at the weakness of their 
faith, whom so brief a separation from Him had shorn of 
their strength, and left powerless against the kingdom of 
darkness; and the after discourse (Matt. xvii. 20) favours 
such an application. But Chrysostom, and generally the 
early interpreters, pointedly exclude the disciples from the 
rebuke; apply it to the surrounding multitude alone; 
whom certainly the term ^generations seems better to 
suit; in whom the Lord beholds samples of the whole 

1 These extracts will abundantly justify what was said above of the 
symptoms of this child's case being those of one taken with epilepsy. 
Cfelius Aurelianus {Morh. Chron. i. 4): Alii [epileptici] publicis in locis 
cadendo foedantur, adjunctis etiam externis periculis, loci causa prsecipites 
dati, aut in flumina vel mare cadentes. And Paulus ..Bgineta, the last of 
the great physicians of the old world, describing epilepsy (iii. 13), might 
almost seem to have borrowed his account from this history; Morbus 
comitialis est convulsio totius corporis cum principalium actionum Ise- 
sione, ... fit hsec aifectio maxime pueris, postea vero etiam in adole- 
scentibus et in vigore consistentibus. Instante vero jam symptomate 
collaptio ipsis derepente contingit et convulsio, et quandoque nihil signifi- 
cans exclamatio Kpd^n, Luke ix. 39]. Prsecipuum vero ipsorum 

signum est oris spuma [peTci d(ppov, Luke ix, 39]. 


THE LUNATIC CHILD. 


389 


Jewish people, the father himself representing onlj too 
well the unbelieving temper of the whole generation to 
which he pertained, and therefore sharing largely in the 
rebuke. This in St. Mark is directly addressed to him, 
though not restrained to him, but intended to pass on to 
many more. It will be best, I think, to understand the 
words as not exclusively aimed at the disciples, nor chiefly; 
but addressed rather to the multitude and the father. 
They, however, are included in the rebuke; their unfaith¬ 
fulness and unbelief had for the time brought them back 
to a level with their nation, and they must share with it 
all in a common condemnation. ^ How long shall I he with 
you?^ are words not so much of one longing to put off 
the coil of flesh,* as of a master, complaining of the 
slowness and dulness of his scholars: ‘Have I abode with 
you all this time, and have you profited so little by my 
teaching?’ Till their task is learned. He must abide 
with them still.^ We may compare his words to Philip, 
‘ Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not 
known Me, Philip ? ’ (John xiv. 9.) 

An d now, since the help which is done on earth. He 
must Himself do it. He exclaims, ^ Bring him unto Me,’ 
As the staff in Gehazi’s hand could not arouse the dead 
child, but the prophet himself must arrive and undertake 
the work, if it were to be done at all, so is it now 
(2 Kin. iv. 31). Yet the first bringing of the child to Jesus 
causes another of the fearful paroxysms of his disorder, so 
that ‘ he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming,’ The 
kingdom of Satan in small and in great is ever stirred 
into a fiercer activity by the coming near of the kingdom 

1 Jerome {Comm, in Matt, in loc.): Non quod tsedio snperatiis sit, et 
mansuetus ac mitis; . . . sed quod in similitudinem medici si aegrotum 
videat contra sua praecepta se gerere dicat: Usquequo accedam ad domum 
tuam, qiiousque artis perdam injuriamj me aliud jubente et te aliud.per- 
petrante ? 

* Bengel: Pestinabat ad Patrem: nec tamen abitum se facere posse 
Bciebat, priusqiiam discipulos ad fidem perduxisset. Molesta erat tarditas 
eorum. 


THE HEALING OF 


39 ^* 

of Christ. Satan has great wrath, when his time is short.' 
But as the Lord on occasion of another difficult and perilous 
cure (Mark v. 9) began a conversation with the sufferer 
Himself, seeking thus to inspire him with confidence, to 
bring back something of calmness to his soul, so does He 
now with the representative of the sufferer, the father, 
being precluded by Tiis actual condition from doing this 
with himself: ‘ How long is it ago since this came unto him?^ 
The father answers, ‘ Of a child/ and, for the stirring of 
more pity, describes again the miserable perils in which 
these fits involved his child 5 at the same time ill content 
that anything should come before the healing, if a healing 
were possible, having, also, present to his mind the recent 
failure of the disciples, he adds, ‘ If Thou, Thou more than 
those, canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us.^ 
In that ^ us/ we see how entirely his own life is knit up 
with his child’s : as the woman of Canaan, pleading for her 
daughter, had cried, ‘Have mercy on me’ (Matt. xv. 22). 
At the same time he reveals by that ^if/ that he has come 
with no unquestioning faith in Christ’s power to aid, but 
is rendering the difficult cure more difficult still by his own 
doubts and unbelief. 

Our Lord’s answer is not without its difficulty, which 
our Yersion has rather evaded than met; but its sense 
is plainly the following: ‘That of thine, that un¬ 

certainty whether anything can be done for thy child or 
not, is to be resolved by thee, and not by Me. There is a 
condition without which he cannot be healed; but the 
fulfilling of the condition lies with thyself and no other. 
The absence of faith on thy part, and not any overmaster¬ 
ing power in this malignant spirit, is that which strait¬ 
ens Me; if this cure is hard, it is thou that renderest it 
so. Thou hast said, “ If I can do anything: ” but the 
question is, “ If thou canst believe ; ” this is the hinge upon 

^ Calvin : Quo propior affulget Christi gratia, et efficacius agit, eo im- 
potentius fuiit Satan. 


THE LUNATIC CHILD. 391 

which all must turn’—and then with a pause, and not 
merely completing the sentence, as in our Version,^ ^ All 
things are possible to him that helieveth.’ Thus faith is here, 
as in every other case, set as the condition of healing; on 
other occasions it is the faith of the person; hut here, 
that being impossible, the father’s is accepted instead; 
even as the Syrophcenician mother’s in the room of her 
daughter’s (Matt. xv. 22). And thus too the Lord appears 
in some sort a fiaLsvrrjs wtcrTecoy, helping the birth ,of faith 
in that travailing soul; even as at length, though with pain 
and sore travail, it comes to the birth, so that the father 
exclaims with tears, ‘ Lord, I believe ; ’ ^ and then, the 
little spark of faith which has been kindled in his soul 
revealing to him the abysmal deeps of unbelief which are 
there, he adds this further: ^ Help Thou mine unbelief.’ * 
For thus it is ever: only in the light of the actual pre¬ 
sence of a grace in the soul does that soul perceive the 
strength and prevalence of the opposing corruption. Till 
then it had no measure by which to measure its deficiency. 
Only he who believes, guesses ought of the unbelief of his 
heart. 

When now this prime condition of healing is no longer 
wanting on his part, the Lord, meeting and rewarding 
even the weak beginnings of his faith, accomplishes the 
cure. How majestic, in his address to the foul spirit, is 
that ‘ I charge thee.^ Ho longer those whom thou mayest 

^ The words should be pointed thus: to, d duvacrai Tricrrtvaat' TzavTa 
Sward ry Triartvovri’ and Bengel enters rightly into the construction 
of the first clause, explaining it thus : Hoc, si potes credere, res est; hoc 
agitur. Calvin: Tu me rogas ut subveniam quoad potero ; atqui inex- 
haustum virtutis fontem in me reperies, si modo afieras satis amplam fidei 
mensuram. 

2 Thomas Jackson, the great Arminian divine, says w®!!: ^ This word, 
belief, is not a term indivisible, but admits of many degrees, as well for 
the certainty of the assent or apprehension, as for the radication of the 
truth, rightly apprehended, in men’s hearts or centre of their affections.’ 

* Augustine, Serm. xliii. 6, 7. 

♦ Bengel: 'Eyw aoi imradau). Ego, antitheton ad discipulos, qui noc 
raluerant. 


392 


THE HEALING OF 


hope to disobey, against whom thou mayest venture to 
struggle, but I, having all power in heaven and on earth, 
charge thee, come out of him ^ (cf. Luke iv. 35). Nor is this 
all: he shall ‘ enter no more into him ; ^ his return is 
barred; he shall not take advantage of his long possession, 
presently to come back (Matt. xii. 41), and reassert his 
dominion 5 the cure shall be at once perfect and lasting. 
The wicked spirit must obey; but he does so most un¬ 
willingly; what he can no longer retain he would, if he 
might, destroy; as Fuller, with a wit which is ‘ in season 
and out of season,’ expresses it, ‘ like an outgoing tenant, 
that cares not what mischief he does.’ ^ So fearful was 
this last paroxysm, so entirely had it exhausted all the 
powers of the child, that ^ he was as one dead; insomuch 
that many said, He is dead ; hut Jesus tooh him hy the hand/ 
and life from that touch of the Lord of life flowing into 
him anew ‘ he arose ’: even as often elsewhere a revivify¬ 
ing power is by the same channel conveyed (Dan. x. 8, 9; 
Eev. i. 17; Matt. xvii. 6-8). 

‘ Then ’— ‘ when He was come into the house/ as we learn 
from St. Mark—‘ came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said. 
Why could not we cast him out ? ’ Where was the secret of 
their defeat, seeing that they were not exceeding their 
commission (Matt. x. 8), and had on former occasions 
found the devils subject to them (Luke x. 17)? ‘And Jesus 
said unto them. Because of your unbelief/ because of their 
lack of that to which, and to which only, all things are 
possible. They had made but a languid use of the means 
for stirring up and increasing faith; while yet, though 
the locks of their strength were shorn, they would ‘ go out 

1 Gregory the Great (Moral, xxxii. 19): Ecce eum non discei-pserat 
cum tenebat, exiens discerpsit: quia nimirum tunc pejus cogitationes 
mentis dilaniat, cum jam egressui divina virtute compulsus appropinquat. 
Et quern mutus possederat, cum clamoribus deserebat: quia plerumque 
cum possidet, minora tentamenta irrogat: cum vero de corde pellitur, 
Rcriori infestatione perturbat. Cf. Horn. xii. in Ezek. ; and H. de Sto. 
Victore: Dum puer ad Dominum accedit, eliditur: quia conversi ad 
Dominum plerumque a daemonic gravius pulsantur, ut vel ad vitia redu- 
cantur, Tel de sua expulsione se vindicet diabolus. 


THE LUNATIC CHILD. 


393 


as at other times before’ against their enemies, being 
certain to be foiled whenever they encountered an enemy 
of peculiar malignity. And such they encountered here ; 
for the phrase ^ this hind ’ marks that there are orders of 
evil spirits, that as there is a hierarchy of heaven, so is 
there an inverted hierarchy of hell. The same is intimated 
in the mention of the unclean spirit going and taking 
‘ seven other spirits more wicked than himself^ (Matt. xii. 
45); and at Ephes. vi. 12, there is probably a climax, 
mounting up from one degree of spiritual power and 
malignity to another. ‘ This hind/ He declares, ‘ goeth 
not out hut hy prayer and fastingC The faith which shall 
be effectual against this must be a faith exercised in 
prayer, that has not relaxed itself by an habitual com¬ 
pliance with the demands of the lower nature, but has 
often girt itself up to an austerer rule, to rigour and self- 
denial. 

But as the secret of all weakness is in unbelief, so of all 
strength in faith: ‘ For verily I say unto you, If ye have 
faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto this moun¬ 
tain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove; and 
nothing shall he impossible unto youl The image re-appears 
with some modifications, Luke xvii. 6; and St. Paul pro¬ 
bably alludes to these words of his Lord, i Cor. xiii. 2. 
Many explain ^faith as a grain of mustard-seed ’ to mean 
lively faith, with allusion to the keen and biting powers of 
that grain.* But it is not on this side that the comparison 
should be urged; rather, it is the smallest faith, with a 
tacit contrast between a grain of mustard-seed, a very 
small thing (Matt. xiii. 31, 32), and a mountain, a very 
great. That smallest shall be effectual to work on this 
largest. The least spiritual power, which is really such, 
shall be strong to overthrow the mightiest powers which 
are merely of this world. 

1 Augustine {Serm. ccxlvi.): Modicum videtur granum sinapis; nihil 
contemtibilius adspectu, nihil fortius gustu. Quod quid est aliud, nisi 
maxiraus ardor et intima vis hdei in Ecclesia ? 


28 . TEE STATER IN TEE FISH'S MOUTH, 


Matt. xyii. 24-27. 

N O other Evangelist records this miracle but St. Mat¬ 
thew ; and before we close onr examination of it, it 
will be abundantly clear why, if we meet it in one Gospel 
only, then in that which is eminently the Gospel of the 
kingdom, of the King and the King’s Son. It is a miracle 
full of the profoundest teaching; though its true depth 
and significance have not always been seized; have been 
sometimes lost and let go altogether; for indeed the entire 
transaction is emptied of all higher meaning when it is 
assumed that the ‘ tribute ’ here demanded of the Lord was 
a civil impost, owing, like the penny of a later occasion 
(Matt. xxii. 19), to the Roman emperor, and not a national 
and theocratic payment, due to the temple and the tem¬ 
ple’s God. But this is a matter which we must not an¬ 
ticipate. 

Our Lord, we may presume, with Peter and other of his 
disciples, was returning, after one of his usual absences, to 
Capernaum, his own city.' The collectors of the temple- 
dues may have been withheld by a certain awe from ad¬ 
dressing Him, and He may have thus passed without 
question; but they detain Peter, who perhaps had lin¬ 
gered a little behind his Lord, and of him they ask, 
‘ Both not your Master jpay tribute ? ’ or, as I should mucTi 
prefer to see it rendered, ‘ Both not your Master jyay the 
didrachms ‘ Tribute ’ is here on many accounts an unfor- 

^ See Greswell, Dissertations, vol. ii. p. 3 74, seq. 

* Ta cidpaxfio, with the article, as something perfectly well known: in 


THE STATER IN THE FISH'S MOUTH 395 


tunate rendering, npliolding and indeed suggesting a 
misappreliension of the meaning of the whole incident; 
which, even without the inducement of this faulty render¬ 
ing, has been often enough altogether misunderstood. 
Thus Clement of Alexandria,^ Origen, Augustine,^ Jerome, 
Sedulius,* all understand by this ‘ tribute^ a, civil payment; 
finding here the same lesson as at Bom. xiii. 1-7 : ‘ Let 

every soul be subject to the higher powers. 

Bender therefore to all their dues, tribute to whom tribute 
is due,’—the lesson, that is, of a willing obedience to the 
civil power. 

But these and others have gone astray, I am persuaded, 
more from not having the right interpretation before them, 
than from any deliberate preference of the wrong. For 
indeed the proofs that what is demanded here is not 
tribute to Caesar, but dues to the temple, are such as ought 
to be convincing to every one before whom they are fairly 
brought. For, in the first place, this ^ didrachm which 

tlie plural on the first occasion, to mark the number of didrachms that 
from the whole people were received, being one from each person; on 
the second, to mark the yearly repetition of the payment from each. 

^ T6v (TTaTrjpa rolg TeXwvaiQ dovCf rd Kaieopog dirodovg Tip Kaioapt, 

* He Catechiz, Rud. 21 : Ipse Dominus, nt nobis hujus sanse doctrinse 
prfeberet exemplum, pro capite hominis, quo erat indutus, tribiitum sol¬ 
vere non dedignatiis est. 

* Tributum Csesareum he calls it. Add to these Calvin, who however 
has a glimpse of the truth, and Maldonatus, for once consenting with 
him who is the great object of his polemical hate. Wolf in like manner 
(Cured, in loc.) has the wrong interpretation; and Petitus (Crit. Sac. ix. 
2566); Com. aLapide; and recently, after any further mistake seemed 
impossible, Wieseler (Chronol. Synopse, p. 265, seq.) has returned to the 
old error. The true meaning has been perfectly seized by Hilary (in 
loc.); by Ambrose (Ep. vii. ad Justum, 12) ; in the main by Chrysostom 
(In Matt. Horn, liv.) and Theophylact, who have yet both gone astray 
upon Num. iii. 40-51; by Theodoret {Queest. in Num. Inter. 9) ; and in 
later times by Cameron (Crit. Sac. in loc.); by Freher (Ibid. vol. ix. 
p. 3633); by Jeremy Taylor (Life of Christ, part iii. § xiv. 13); by 
Hammond, Grotius, Lightfoot, Bengel, Michaelis, Olshausen, Stier, 
Greswell (Dissert, vol. ii. p. 376), Alford, and Ellicott (Life of our Lord, 
p. 229). 

^ In the Septuagint (Exod. xxx. 13) tov di^pd^pov, they express 

themselves, as naturally they would, according to the Alexandrian 


THE STATER IN 


396 

the collectors here demand, was exactly the ransom of souls, 
the half shekel (Exod. xxx. 11-16) to he paid by every 
Israelite above twenty years old to the service and current 
expenses of the tabernacle, or, as it afterwards would be, 
of the temple.^ Certainly it does not appear at first as an 
annual payment, but only as payable on the occasions, not 
frequently recurring, of th e numbering of the people. But it 
became annual, whether this had been the real intention 
from the first, or out of a later custom. Thus there are 
distinct notices of this payment in the time of the Jewish 
kings. Joash sets apart for the reparation of the temple 
funds to be derived from three sources (2 Kin. xii. 4); the 
first being this half shekel, ‘ the collection that Moses the 
servant of God laid upon Israel in the wilderness,’ as it is 
called in the contemporary record in the Chronicles (2 
Chron. xxiv. 9).^ At a later day, it is the third part of a 

draclim, wliicli was twice the value of the Attic (see Hammond, in 
loc.). 

1 Before the Babylonian exile, the shekel was only a certain weight of 
silver, not a coin. The Maccabees, however (i Macc. xv. 6), received 
the privilege, or won the right, from the kings of Syria of coining their 
own money ,* and the shekels, half shekels, and quarter shekels now in 
the cabinets of collectors are to be referred to their time. These growing 
scarce, and not being coined any more, it became the custom to estimate 
the temple-dues as two drachms (the SiSpaxfiov here required), a sum 
actually somewhat larger than the half shekel, as shown by a comparison 
of existing specimens of each,* thus Josephus (Antt. iii. 8. 2): 'O Sk aUXoc, 
vofxLffna 'E^palwv iov, ’ArriKag dsxtrai dpaxpag Tsadapag. As the produce of 
the miracle was to pay for two persons, the sum required was four 
drachms, or a whole shekel, and the ararrjp found in the mouth of the 
lish, often called rtrpddpaxpoc, is just that sum. Jerome: Siclus autem, 
id est stater, habet drachmas quatuor. This stater is not of course the 
gold coin more accurately so called, equivalent not to four, but to 
twenty, drachms; but the‘silver tetradrachm, which in later times of 
Greece was called a stater. That other stater, equal to the Persian daric, 
was worth something more than sixteen shillings of our money, this 
three shillings and three pence (see the of Gr. and Rom. ^Antt. 
8. vv. Drachma and Stater; Winer, Reahvorterhuch, s. v. Sekel; and the 
Diet, of the Bible, art. Money, vol. ii. p. 409). It is curious that Theophy- 
lact should be ignorant of what this stater is. Some think it he says a 
precious stdne found in Syria. ^ ’ 

3 So Bathe and Keil; Michaelis {Mos. Recht, vol. iii. p. 202) questions 
or denies it. ^ 


THE FISHS MOUTH. 


397 


shekel, and not the half, which the Jews impose upon 
themselves (Nehem. x. 32). This might suggest a doubt 
whether the same contribution is there intended ; as they 
would scarcely have ventured to alter the amount of a 
divinely instituted payment, let the fact that it was 
yearly, and expressly for the service of God’s house, will 
not allow us to suppose it any other; and they may have 
found in their present poverty and distress an excuse for 
the diminution of the charge. It was an annual payment 
in the time of Josephus.' Philo attests the conscientious 
and ungrudging accuracy with which it was paid by the 
Jews of the Dispersion, so that in almost every city of the 
Empire, and in cities too beyond its limits, there was a 
sacred chest for the collection of these dues : the sum of 
which at stated times sacred messengers were selected 
from among the worthiest to bear to Jerusalem.^ It was 
Yespasian who diverted this capitation tax into the im¬ 
perial fisc, but only after the city and the temple had been 
destroyed. Josephus is very distinct on this point; I 
quote his words, as the sole argument in favour of a secular 
and not a theocratic payment is, that before this time, as 
early as Pompeius, these moneys had been turned from 
their original destination, and made payable to the Roman 
exchequer. Of Vespasian he writes: ‘ He imposed a tri¬ 
bute on the Jews wheresoever they lived, requiring each 

^ Antt. xviii. 9. 1. It should he p<aid between the isth and 25th of 
the month Adar (March), that is, about the feast of the passover. Yet 
no secure chronological conclusions in regard to our Lord’s ministry can 
be won from this; as, through his absence from Capernaum, the money 
might have been for some time due. Indeed, the feast of tabernacles 
was probably now at hand. 

* He Monarch, ii. 3 : 'lEpoTTOjXTrol row aptarivSrjv sTrixpiOtVTtg. 

The whole passage reminds one much of the collection, and the manner 
of the transmission, of the gifts of the faithful in Achaia to Jerusalem by 
the hands of Paul; cf. his Zeff. ad Cai. § 31. We find from Cicero {Pro 
Flacco, 28), that one charge against Flaccus was that he prevented the 
transmission of these temple-dues to .Jerusalem: Cum aurum, Judseorum 
nomine, quotannis ex Italia et ex omnibus vestris provinciis Hieroso- 
lymam exportari soleret, Flaccus sanxit edicto, ne ex Asia exportnri 
liceret. 


THE STATER IN 


39^ 

to pay yearly two dracliins to the Capitol, as before they 
were wont to pay them to the temple at Jerusalem.’^ But 
of Pompeius he merely affirms, that ‘ he made Jerusalem 
tributary to the Romans/ ^ with no mention of this tax at 
all. We have already had abundant evidence that long 
after his time it continued to be rendered to the temple. 
Titus alludes to this fact, when, upbraiding the Jews with 
the unprovoked character of their revolt, he reminds the 
revolters that the Romans had permitted them to collect 
their own sacred imposts. 

We note further that it is not ^ publicans ’ who demand 
tliis tribute, as the collectors would certainly have been 
called, had they been the ordinary tax-gatherers, and this 
an ordinary tax. As little is the tone of the demand, 
‘ Doth not your Master pay the didrachms ? ’ that of a rude 
Roman tax-gatherer, who had detected one in the act of 
evading, as he supposed, the tax; but is exactly what we 
might expect, where the duty was one of imperfect obliga¬ 
tion, which if any declined, the payment could scarcely 
have been enforced.** To Chrysostom, indeed, the question 
sounds a rude one : ‘ Does your Master count Himself ex¬ 
empt from the payment of the ordinary dues? We know 
the freedom which He claims; does He propose to exercise 
it here ? ’ It is, as Theophylact suggests, more probably 
the reverse. Having seen or heard of the wonderful works 
which Christ did, they may have been uncertain in what 
light to regard Him, whether to claim from Him the 
money or not, and this doubt may utter itself in their 
question. 

1 B. J. vii. 6. 6. 

^ Antt. xiv. 4 * 4 * JtpoaoXvjxa vTrort^rj <p6pov 'Fiopaiotg tTToirjfftv. 

* AaTpoXoyflv vpXv tTri rtf Qecp twirpsipapst’. 

* Kuinoel (in loc.), one of the right interpreters of this incident, ob¬ 
serves this: Exactores Eomani acerbius hand dubie exegissent tributum 
Csesari solvendum. And in the Rabbinical treatise especially relating to 
the manner of collecting these dues, it is said; Placide a quovis semisi- 
clum expetierunt. Grotius: Credibile est multos, quia non cogebantur, 
id onus detrectasse. 


THE FI sirs MOVTH. 


399 


Peter, zealous for his Master’s honour, sure that his piety 
will make Him prompt to render to God the things which 
are God’s, pledges Him without hesitation to the payment: 
‘ he saith, TesI Certainly he was over-hasty in this. 'Hot 
in this spirit had he exclaimed a little while before, ‘ Thou 
art the Christ, the Son of the living God ’ (Matt. xvi. i6). 
For the time at least he had lost sight of his Lord’s true 
position and prerogative, that He was a Son over his own 
house, and not a servant in another’s; the Head of the 
theocracy, not one of its subordinate members,—so that 
it was to Him in his Father that offerings were to be 
made, not from Him to be received.^ It was not for Him 
who was ^ greater than the temple,’ and Himself the true 
temple (John ii. 21; Heb. x. 20), identical with it accord¬ 
ing to its spiritual significance, and in whom the Shechinah 
glory dwelt, to pay dues for the support of that other 
temple built with hands, whose glory was vanishing away, 
now that in his flesh the true tabernacle was set up, which 
the Lord had pitched and not man. He who should give 
Himself a ransom for all other souls could not properly 
pay a ransom for his own; and it disturbed, or at least 
obscured, the true relation between Him and all other men 
that He should even seem to pay it. Willing therefore to 
bring back Peter, and in him the other disciples, to the 
true recognition of Himself, from which they had in part 
fallen, the Lord puts to him the question which follows. 
With the same intention, being thus engaged through 
Peter’s hasty imprudence to the rendering of the didrachm, 
which now He can scarcely recede from. He yet does it in 
the remarkable way of this present miracle—a miracle 
which should testify that all tilings served Him, from the 

1 Ambrose (Ep. yii. ad Jiistum, la) : Hoc est igitur didracbma, quod 
exigebatur secundum legem: sed non debebat illud filius regis, sed 
aiienus. Quid enim se Christus redimeret ab hoc mundo, qui venerat ut 
tolleret peccatum mundi ? Quid se a peccato redimeret, qui descenderat, 
lit omnibus peccatum dimitteret ? . . . Quid se redimeret a morte, qui 
camem susceperat, ut morte sua omnibus resurrectionem adquireret? 
Cf. Enarr. in Ps. xlviii. 14. 


4-00 


THE STATER IN 


greatest to tlie least, even to the fishes that wandered 
through the paths of the sea,—that He was Lord over 
nature, and, having nothing, yet, in his Lather’s care for 
Him, was truly possessed of all things.^ For here, as so 
often in the life of our Lord, the depth of his poverty and 
humiliation is lighted up hy a gleam of his glory; while, 
by the manner of the payment. He re-asserts the true 
dignity of his person, which else by the payment itself was 
in danger of being obscured and compromised in the eyes 
of some. The miracle, then, was to supply a real need,— 
slight, indeed, as an outward need, for the money could 
assuredly have been in some other and more ordinary way 
procured; but as an inner need, most real: in this, then, 
differing in its essence from the apocryphal miracles, which 
are so often mere sports and freaks of power, having no 
ethical motive or meaning whatever. 

We may trace this purpose in all which follows. The 
Lord does not wait for Peter to inform Him what he had 
answered, and to what engaged Him; but ^ when he ivas 

^ Djeleladdin’s Qrand poem (see Tlioluck, Bluthensamm. ans der 
Morgenl. Myst. p. 148) tells exactly the same story, namely, that all 
nature waits on the friend of God, so that all things are his, and his 
seeming poverty is hut another side of his true riches; only that what 
there is hut in idea, is here clothed in the flesh and blood of an actual fact. 
I can give but a most inadequate extract from the German translation: 

Adham Ibrahim sass einst am Meeresstrand, 

Nahte dort als Bettler sich sein Monchgewand. 

Plotzlich tritt ein Emir mit Gefolg’ ihn an, 

Der vormals dem Seelenkonig unterthan, 

Kiisst den Fuss ihm, und wird alsobald verwirrt, 

Da den Scheich er in der Kutt’ ansichtig wird. 

Den, dem einst gehorcht’ ein weites Landgebiet, 

Staunend er jetzt seine Kutte niihen sieht. 

* * * 

Drauf der Scheich die Nadel plotzlich wirft in’s Meer, 

Duft dann laut: Ihr Eische, bringt die Kadel her ! 

Alsbald ragen hunderttausend Kopf hervor, 

Jeder Fisch bringt eine goldne Nadel vor. 

Nun der Scheich mit Ernst sich zu dem Emir kehrt: 
Wunderst du dich noch, dass ich die Kutt’ begehrt? 


THE FISH'S MOUTH. 


AO I 


eome into the house, Jesus ‘prevented him,^ anticipated his 
communication, showed Himself a discemer of the thonghts 
of the heart, and, though He had not been present, per¬ 
fectly aware of all which had passedd ‘ What thinJcest 
thou, Simon? Of whom do the Icings of the earth ^ (with an 
emphasis on the last words, for there is a silent contrasting 
of these with the King of heaven, as at Ps. ii. 2) ^ tahe 
custom or tribute?^ of their own children, or of strangers 
On what principle has he been promising this ? is not 
all the analogy of things earthly against it ? These earthly 
things, it is true, cannot prove the heavenly, yet are they 
shadows of the true, and divinely appointed helps for the 
better understanding of them. When Peter confesses that 
not of their own children, but ^ of strangers,’ then at once 
He brings him to the conclusion whither He was leading 
him, that ^ the children,’ or as it would have been better 
rendered, ^ the sons’ were ‘free.’ ^ 

We have here proof absolute, if further proof were 
needed, that this which was demanded of the Lord was 

^ Jerome: Antequam Petrus suggeret, Dominus interrogate ne scan- 
dalizentur discipuli ad postulationem tributi, quum videant eum nosse 
quae absente se gesta aunt. 

^ Krji^aoc, the capitation tax; tsXt], customs or tolls on goods. 

® It is not easy to translate aWorpiioi' here. It is not so strong as our 
^strangers,' or as the alieni of tbe Vulgate, or as Luther’s, von Fremden. 
It means no more than those that stand not in the immediate relation of 
vioi to the king ‘(qui non pertinent ad familiam regis: Kuinoel); ‘ of 
other folk’ (Hammond); von andern Lenten (De Wette). Compare 
for this use of dWoTpwg, Ecclus. xl. 29. Gfrdrer (Hie Heil. Sage, vol. ii. 
p. 56), stumbling at the whole story, finds fault with this interpretation, 
because, forsooth, the Jews were not dWorpioi ,— as though they were not 
so in comparison with Christ ; and, again, because they too were mol 
Ofov ,—as though they were so in any such sense as He was. For him 
and for all like him, to whom there is nothing in Christ difibrent from 
another man, the narrative does, in his own words, ‘ suffer under incura¬ 
ble difficulties.’ 

^ With a play on the words, which is probably much more than a 
mere play, and rests upon a true etymology, so witnessing for the very 
truth which Christ is asserting here, we might say in Latin, Liberi sunt 
liberi (see Freund, Lat. Worterhuch, s. v. liber); these very words occur ■ 
ring in the noble Easter hymn beginning, 

Cedant justi signa luctus. 


THE STATER IN 


{C2 

God’s money, to be rendered to God, and not Ciesar’s, to be 
rendered to Csesar, seeing that only on this assumption 
could He have claimed immunity for Himself, as He does 
in those words, *Then are the children free’ But with a 
payment owing to Csesar it would have been quite a different 
thing. He was no son of Csesar. The fact that the 
children are free would have involved no exemption to 
Him. He might, indeed, have asserted his freedom on 
other grounds; though that He would not, since He had 
come submitting Himself during his earthly life to every 
ordinance of man. They who deny this have no choice 
but to appeal to his royal Davidical descent, as that in 
right of which He challenges this freedom. But no real 
help is to be gotten there. Christ would then argue, that 
being one King’s Son, He therefore was exempted from the 
tribute owing to another king, and that other, one of an 
adverse dynasty,—in itself an argument most futile, and 
certainly not that of the sacred text.' 

The plural here,^ the so?!.?,’rather than a singular, ‘the son,’ 
has perplexed some, who have asked. How could the Lord 
thus speak, if indeed He had only Himself, as the only- 
begotten Son of God, in his eye ? The explanation is easy. 
In making a general statement of the worldly relations from 
which He borrows his analogy, and by which He assists the 
understanding of his disciples, as there are many ‘ Icings of 
the earth’ or as one king might have many sons. He 
naturally throws his speech into a plural form; and it is 
just as natural, when we come to the heavenly order of 
things which is there shadowed forth, to restrain it to the 
singular, to the one Son; seeing that to the King of heaven 
there is but One, the only-begotten of the Bather.^ But if 

' Augustine indeed (Qucsst. Evang. i. qu. 23) helps it out in another 
way: In omni regno terreno intelligendum est liberos esse regni filios. . . 
Multo ergo magis liberi esse debent in quolibet regno terreno filii regni 
illius, sub quo sunt omnia regna terrena. 

* Grotius: Plurali numero utitur, non quod ad alios earn extendat 
libertatem, sed quod comparatio id exigebat, sumta non ab unius sed ab 
omnium regum more ac consuetudine. 


THE FISH'S MOUTH. 


403 


tlie plural here need cause us no misgiving, as little can there 
be drawn from it the conclusion, that the Lord intended to 
include in this liberty not Himself only, but all his people, 
all that in this secondary sense are the ‘ sons of God.’ * 
This plainly is not true concerning dues owing to God; 
none are so bound to render them as his ^ sonsi Were 
the payment in question a civil one, it would be equally 
untrue; however such an interpretation might be welcome 
to Anabaptists; ® however some extreme Homish canonists 
may have found here an argument for the exemption of 
the clergy from payments to the State, although others 
among themselves justly remark that the words, if they 
include any of the faithful, must include all.^ Hot thus, 
not as one of many, not as the first among many brethren, 
but as the true and only Son of God, He challenges this 
liberty for Himself; and ‘we may observe, by the way, 
that the reasoning itself is a strong and convincing testi¬ 
mony to the proper Sonship, and in the capacity of Son 
to the proper relationship of Jesus Christ to the Lather, 
which those who deny that relationship will not easily 

1 So however Cocceius, who urges all which can he said for this appli¬ 
cation of the words: Christus ostendit nec se, qui Filius Dei est, ohligari 
ad didrachraa solvendum, tanquam Xvrpov animae suae, nec suos discipulos, 
qiii ah ipso haereditant lihertatem, et non argento redimuntur (Es. lii. 3), 
eed pretioso ipsius sanguine (1 Pet. i. 18, 19), et facti sunt filii Dei vivi 
(Hos. i. 10), amplius teneri ad servitutem figurae. Olshausen follows 
him in this, and the author of an interesting article on this miracle in 
the Diet, of the Bible, s. v. Tribute. 

^ The Anabaptist conclusions which might be drawn from an abuse of 
the passage are met on right general grounds by Aquinas {Swn. Theol, 
2“ 2®, 104., art. 6), though he has no very precise insight into the mean¬ 
ing of this history. Milton, not always a fair controversialist, is a 
singularly unfair one in the use which he makes of this Scripture {De¬ 
fence of the People of England, 3). 

3 Tirinus: Nam pari jure omnes justi, immo omnes Christiani exempt! 
essent. Compare Field, Of the Church, b. 5. ch. 53. Michaelis affirms 
that others have pushed these words to the asserting of the same liberty 
{Mos. Becht, vol. iii. p. 210); that he has himself, in travelling, seen a 
Pietist cheat the revenue before his eyes: who, when charged with this, 
pleaded in defence the words, ^ Then are the children free' The story is, 
unhappily, onlv •*•00 welcome to him. 

18 


THE STATER IN 


m 

evade or impugn.’ * There is in these words the same 
implioit assertion that Christ’s relation to Grod is a dif¬ 
ferent one from that of other men, which runs through the 
parable of the Wicked Husbandmen, in the distinction 
which is so markedly drawn between the son of the house¬ 
holder and his servants (Mark xii. 6): nor are there any 
testimonies to the dignity and the prerogatives of the Son 
more convincing than these, which, not contained in single 
isolated expressions, not lying on the surface of Scripture, 
are bedded deeply in it, and rather assume his preeminence 
than declare it. It is true that for those determined not 
to be convinced, there is always a loophole of escape, as 
from other declarations, so also from these ; in the present 
instance, the plural ^ sons ’ affords, for those who seek it, 
the desired opportunity of evasion. 

Under this protest Christ will pay the money. ^ NoU 
withstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, 
and cast an hooJc, and tahe up the fish that first cometh up ; ’ 
the fish, that is, which first ascended from the deeper 
waters to his hook ; ‘ and when thou hast opened his mouth, 
thou shalt find apiece of money,^ He will put no stumbling- 
block in the way of any, but provide things honest in the 
sight of all. Were He now to refuse this payment, it 
might seem to those who knew not the transcendant 
secret of his birth that He was affecting a false liberty,^ 


' Greswell, Dissert, vol. ii. p. 736; so too Chrysostom. I know not 
w'hether this passage was used by the Catholics in the Arian controversy; 
but Hilary, a confessor and standard-bearer for the truth in that great 
conflict, brings out well how the Godhead af Christ is involved in this 
argument {Comm, in Matt, in loc.) : Didrachma tamquam ab homine 
poscebatur a Christo. Sed ut ostenderet legi se non esse subjectum, id 
in se patemcB dignitatis gloriam contestaretur, terreni privilegii posuit 
exemplum: censu aiit tributis regum filios non teneri, potiusque se 
Eedemtorem animae nostrae corporisque esse quam in redemtionem sui 
aliquid postulandum; quia Kegis Filium extra commimionem oporteret 
esse reliquorum. 

* Chrysostom {Horn. Ixiv. in Joh.) gives to these words, ^ Lest ive 
should offend them,' another turn—lest, when this secret of'our heavenly 
birth, and our consequent exemption from tribute, is told them, they 


THE FI sirs MOUTH. 


405 


was come not to fulfil tlie law, but to destroy it. There 
was indeed no need, only a decorum, in the payment; as 
there was no necessity for his baptism ; it was that whereto 
of his own choice He willingly submitted; nor yet for the 
circumcision which He received in his flesh; but He took 
on Him the humiliations of the law, that He might in due 
time deliver from under the law. 

And here is the explanation of the very significant fact 
that the Lord should make this payment not for Himself 
only, but also for Peter, the representative of all the 
fiiithful. He came under the same yoke with men, that 
they might enter into the same freedom with Him.^ 

^ That tahe,^ and give unto them for Me and theeJ ® Capernaum 
was the place of Peter’s domicile (Matt. viii. 5, 14) as well 
as the Lord’s; the place therefore where his ^ tribute,'^ no 

should be unable to receive it; and we should thus have put a stumbling- 
block in their path, revealing to them mysteries which they are unable 
to receive. 

* Ambrose {^Ep. vih ad Justum, 18) : Ideo didrachmum solvi jubet pro 
se et Petro, quia uterque sub lege generati. Jubet ergo secundum legem 
solvi, ut eos qui sub lege erant redimeret. And Augustine, upon Ps. 
cxxxvii. 8 : Domine, retribues pro me, adduces this history: Nihil debe- 
bat: pro se non reddidit, sed pro nobis reddidit; and again {Serm. 
civ. 7): Mysterium latebat: Christus tamen tributum non debitum 
persolvebat. Sic persolvit et mortem ; non debebat, et persolvebat. 
Ille nisi indebitum solveret, nunquam nos a debito liberaret. Jerome 
(in loc.): Ut ostenderetur similitudo carnis, dum eodem et servus et 
Dominus pretio liberantur. 

2 Moule {Heraldry of Fish) gives the natural mythology connected 
with this miracle: ‘A popular idea assigns the dark marks on the shoul¬ 
ders of the haddock to the impression left by St. Peter with his finger 
and thumb, when he took the tribute-money out of the fish’s mouth at 
Capernaum; but the haddock certainly does not now exist in the seas of 

the country where the miracle was performed.The dory, called 

St. Peter’s fish in several countries of Europe, contends with the haddock 
the honour of bearing the marks of the Apostle’s fingers, an impression 
transmitted to posterity as a perpetual memorial of the miracle. The 
name of the dory is hence asserted to be derived from the French adori^ 
worshipped.’ 

» In this avTi liwv Kai nov (cf. Matt. XX. a8; and Winer, Gramm. 
§ 51, 5 a) lies another proof that we have here a ransom for persons, a 
price given in their stead, with a reference to the original institution of 
this payment; and so another argument, if that were needed, for the 
truth of our intei'pretation. 



4o6 


THE STATER IN 


less tlian tlie Lord’s, would be due. Christ says not ^ for 
us,^ but ^for Me and thee ; ’ as elsewhere, ‘ I ascend unto 
my Father and your Father, and to my God, and your God ’ 
(John XXV. 17); for, even while He makes common part 
with his brethren. He yet does this by an act of con¬ 
descension, not by a necessity of nature; and it greatly 
concerns them that they should understand this; and at 
no time lose sight of the fact that here is a delivered 
and a Deliverer, a ransomed and a Eansomer, how¬ 
ever to the natural eye there may seem two who are 
ransomed alike. And, as on other occasions, at his pre¬ 
sentation in the temple (Luke ii. 22-24), and again at his 
baptism (Matt. hi. 16, 17), there was something more 
than common which should hinder a misunderstanding of 
that which was done; at the presentation, in Simeon’s 
song and Anna’s thanksgiving; at the baptism, first in 
John’s reluctance to baptize Him, and then in the opened 
heaven and the voice from thence;—so also is there here 
a protest of Christ’s immunity from the present payment, 
first in his own declaration, ^ Then are the children free; ’ 
and next in the novel method by which He supplies the 
necessity which Peter has so thoughtlessly created for 
Him.^ 

It is remarkable, and is a solitary instance of the kind, 
that the issue of this bidding is not told us : but we are, 
of course, meant to understand that Peter went to the 
neighbouring lake, cast in his hook, and in the mouth of 
the first fish that rose to it, found, according to his Lord’s 
word, the money that was needed. As little here as at 
Luke V. 4 ? did the miraculous in the miracle consist in 
a mere foreknowledge on the Lord’s part that this first 

1 Bengel: In medio actu suknissionis emicat majestas. And Clarins: 
lleddit ergo censum, sed ex ore piscis acceptum, ut agnoscatur majestas. 
So too Origen (in loc.) recognizes a saving of the Lord’s dignity in the 
mode of the payment, a saving, of course, not for his own sake, hut for 
ours. In other cases where misapprehension was possible, we find a like 
care for this (John xi. 41, 42). 


THE FI sirs MOUTIL 


407 


fisb. sbould bear tbe coin in its month : He did not merely 
foreknow; but by tbe mysterious potency of bis will wbicb 
ran tbrongb all nature, drew sucb a fisb to that spot at 
tbat moment, and ordained tbat it should swallow tbe 
book. We see bere as at Jonab i. 17 (^tbe Lord had 
prepared a great fisb to swallow up Jonab’), tbat in tbe 
lower spheres of creaturely life there is unconscious 
obedience to bis will; tbat these also are not out of God, 
but move in Him, and without knowing are tbe ministers 
of bis will (i Kin. xiii. 24; xvii. 6; xx. 36; Amos ix. 3). 

All attempts to exhaust this miracle of its miraculous 
element, to make tbe Evangelist tell, and intend to tell, an 
ordinary transaction,—as that of tbe rationalist Paulus, 
who will have it tbat tbe Lord bade Peter go and catch as 
many fisb as would sell for tbe required sum, and main¬ 
tains tbat this actually lies in tbe words,^—are hopelessly 

^ Ills honesty and his Greek keep admirable company. Bpiorov 
he takes collectively, primum quemque piscem, avoi^ag rb aropa avrov 
solvens eum ah hamo, tbpiiaug orar>/(oa vendendo piscem statera tibi com- 
parabis. This is not even new; for see Kocher, Analecta, in loc., 1766 : 
Piscem capies quern pro statere vendere poteris. In a later work, Paulus 
amends his plea, and dvolKag rb aropia is no longer, opening the fish’s 
mouth to take out the hook, but, opening thine own mouth, i. e. crying 
the fish for sale, avrov evprjrtig ararnpa, thou wilt there earn a stater. 
Another of the same school (see Kuinoel, in loc.) will have the whole 
speech a playful irony on the Lord’s part, who would show Peter the im¬ 
possible payment to which he has pledged Him, when money they had 
none in hand; as though He had said, ‘ The next thing which you had 
better do is to go and catch us a fish, and find in its mouth the coin which 
shall pay this tax for which you have engaged us.’ It was reserved for 
the mythic school of interpreters to find other difficulties here, besides 
the general one of there being a miracle at all. ^IIow,’ exclaims Strauss 
{Leben Jesu, vol. ii. p. 195), ‘ could the fish retain the stater in its mouth ? 
the coin must needs have dropt out while it was opening its jaws to 
swallow the hook; and, moreover, it is not in the mouths, but in the 
bellies, of fishes that precious things are found.’ Did Juvencus, by the 
way, anticipate and seek to evade this difficulty, when, turning the Gos¬ 
pels into hexameters, he wrote: Hujus pandantur scissipenetralia ventris? 
Such is the objection against which this history is too weak to stand! 
It can only be matched with the objection which another makes to the 
historic truth of Daniel in the lions’ den; namely, that if a stone was 
laid at the mouth of the den (Dan. vi. 17), the lions must needs have 
been suffocated,—so that nothing will satisfy him but that the mouth of 
the den must have been hermetically sealed! 


THE STATER IN 


fo8 

absurd. Yet, on the otlier band, tbej multiply miracles 
without a warrant who assume that the stater was created 
for the occasion; i nay more, they step altogether out of 
the proper sphere of miracle into that of absolute creation; 
for in the miracle, as distinguished from the act of pure 
creation, there is always a nature-basis to which the 
divine power which works the wonder more or less closely 
links itself. That divine power which dwelt in Christ, 
restored, as in the case of the sick, the halt, the blind; it 
multiplied, as the bread in the wilderness; it changed into 
a nobler substance, as the water at Cana; it quickened 
and revived, as Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus; it 
brought together, as here, by wonderful coincidences, the 
already existing; but, as far as our records reach, it 
formed no new limbs; it made no bread, no wine, out of 
nothing; it created no new men: never passed over on 
any one occasion into the region of absolute creation.* 

The allegorical interpretations, or rather uses, of this 
miracle, for they are seldom intended for more, have not 
much to attract; neither that of Clement of Alexandria,^ 
that each skilful ^ fisher of men ’ will, like Peter, remove 
the coin of pride and avarice and luxury, from the mouth 
of them whom he has drawn up by the hook of the Gospel 
from the waste waters of the world; nor yet that which 
St. Ambrose brings forward, wherein the stater plays 

^ So does Seb. Sclimidt {Fascic. Hiss. p. 796). Chrysostom (iZow. 
Ixxxvii. in Joh.') accounts in like manner for the fish which the disciples 
find ready upon the shore (John xxi. 9); and some will have that Christ 
not merely gave sight to, hut made organs of vision for, the man who 
was born blind (John ix.). 

2 The accounts are numerous of precious things found in the bellies of 
fishes. The story of Polycrates’ ring is well known (Herodotus, iii. 42); 
and in Jewish legend Solomon, having lost his ring of power, recovers 
it in the same unexpected way (Eisenmenger, Fntdeckt. JudeMh. vol. i. 
p. 360). Augustine (Be Civ. Dei, xxii. 8) records a like incident in his 
own day, in which he sees a providential dealing of God, answering the 
prayer, and supplying the need, of one of his servants. 

* Pmdag. ii. vol. i. p. 172, Potter’s ed.j cf. Origen, Comm, in Matt, for 
the same. 


THE FISW3 MO UTH, 


409 


altogether a different, indeed an opposite, part; ^ nor has 
Augustine’s ^ more to draw forth our assent. It is super¬ 
fluous to press further a miracle already so rich in teaching 
as this approves itself to he. 

‘ Ilexaem. v. 6: Ideo misit retia, et complexus est Stephanum, qiii de 
Kvangelio primus ascendit [roi^ dva, 3 dvra Trpwrcr] h'^bens in ore suo sta- 
terem justitiae. Unde confessione constant! ciamavit, dicens: Ecce video 
cfelos apertos, et Filium hominis stantem ad dexteram Dei. So Hilary, 
Comm, in Matt, in loc. 

^ Enarr. in Ps. cxxxvii. 8: Primum surgentem de mari, primogenitum 
a mortuis; for by Him, he says, with the error which runs thiougb his 
whole interpretation, ob exactione htijus secidi liberamur. 


29 . the raising of LAZARUS. 

John xi. 1-54. 

S T. JOHIT expressly states towards the close of his 
Gospel that tliere were many signs wrought by the 
Lord in the presence of his disciples which were not 
written in his hook, hut that enough were recorded to 
make evident that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God 
(xx. 30, 31; xxi. 35). He has indeed shown a remarkable 
restraint, even a parsimony, in the commemoration of 
these. He has in no instance more than one miracle of 
the same kind; thus one healing of the lame (v. 9), one 
opening of blind eyes (ix. 7), one raising from the dead, 
namely this of Lazarus; and, as wrought by the Lord in 
the days of his flesh, only seven miracles in all—these 
seven again dividing themselves into two groups, of four 
and of three; four wrought in Galilee, and three in 
Judsea. When we call to mind the frequent grouping by 
seven both in his Gospel and in the Apocalypse, we can 
hardly account this number accidental. We have now 
reached the last of this seven; it is not for nothing that it 
should thus be the last, and so occupy the place which it 
does just at the close of Christ’s ministry on earth. He 
who was Himself so soon to taste of death i^ill show 
Himself by this infallible proof the Lord of life and 
conqueror of death; who, redeeming the soul of another 
from the grave, would assuredly not lack the power to 
redeem his own from the same. 

It must always remain a mystery why this miracle, 
transcending as it does all other miracles which the Lord 


THE EAISIEG CF LAZABUS. 


411 


wroaght, so memorable in itself, drawing after it the 
consequences wbicb it did (John xi. 33), sbonld bave been 
past over bj tbe three earlier Evangelists, and left for the 
latest to record. The utmost that can be hoped is to 
suggest some probable explanation.' Thus, some have 
urged, as Grotius and Olshausen, that the earlier Evan¬ 
gelists, writing in Palestine, and while Lazarus or some of 
his family yet survived, would not willmgly draw atten¬ 
tion, and, it might be, persecution, upon them (see John 
xii. 10); while St. John, who wrote at a much later date, 
and not in Palestine, but in Asia Minor, had no such 
motive for keeping this miracle out of sight. The omission 
on their part, and the mention upon his, will then corre¬ 
spond to a like omission and mention of the name of the 
disciple who smote off the ear of the High Priest’s servant, 
St. John alone recording that it was Peter who struck the 
blow (xviii. 10). But how unsatisfying an explanation is 
this ! It would account at the utmost for the silence of 
St. Matthew; not for St. Mark’s, whose Gospel was 
probably written at Pome; for St. Luke’s as little, who 
wrote for his friend Theophilus, whom many intimations 
make us conclude to have lived in Italy. And the danger 
itself, how hard it is to imagine that this should actually 
have existed ! There may have been, we know there was, 
such at the first moment; but how much must have 
altered since, what new objects of hostility arisen : not to 
say that if there ivas danger, and such as a mention of this 
miracle wrought on him would enhance, yet Lazarus would 
as little himself have shrunk, as those who loved him 

^ Hengstenterg reminds us of similar phenomena in the relation be¬ 
tween the Books of Kings and of Chronicles. The former, not to speak 
of other omissions, passes over altogether the great confederacy of the 
desert tribes in the times of King Jehoshaphat, with the deliverance which 
was divinely wrought for Judah; and it is only in the Chronicles that 
any record of these events is to be found; and this, although nothing less 
than the existence of the nation was then at stake ; and Ps. xlvii., xlviii., 
Ixxxiii. all testify how profound the impression on the mind of the people 
which the danger, and the deliverance from the danger, had wrought. 


THE EAISING OF LAZARUS. 


M2 

would have wished to withdraw him, from honourable 
peril, incurred for Christ’s sake. Neither he nor they 
could have desired that a work revealing so much of the 
glory of the Lord should remain untold, lest persecution 
or danger might from the telling accrue to him, or to 
some dear to him. Others, as Neander, feeling the in¬ 
sufficiency of this explanation, have observed how the 
three earlier Evangelists report few miracles save those 
which were wrought in Galilee, leaving those of Jerusalem 
and its neighbourhood nearly untouched; and that so they 
have omitted this.^ But this which is perfectly true, is no 
explanation, only a re-stating in other words of the fact 
which needs explanation; and the question still remains. 
Why they should have done so ? and to this it is difficult 
to find now the satisfactory answer. That the earlier 
Evangelists did not know of this wondrous work cannot 
for an instant be admitted. One of them, St. Matthew, 
was an eye-witness of it, no less than St. John; two of 
them record the feast in Simon’s house which grew im¬ 
mediately from it (Matt. xxvi. 6; Mark xiv. 3); and all of 
them the enthusiastic reception of the Lord as He entered 
Jerusalem on the day of Palms, which reception only this 
miracle adequately accounts for. 

^ Now a certain man was side, named Lazarus, of Bethany,'^ 
the town of Mary and her sister Martha.^ This ‘ Now,’ or 
‘ But,’ which would be preferable, connects with what just 


* Lehen Jesti, p. 357. 

^ Stanley (Sinai and Palestine, p. 186): ^Bethany, a wild mountain 
hamlet, screened hy an intervening ridge from the view of the top of 
Olivet, perched on its brohen plateau of rock, the last collection of human 
habitations before the desert, hills which reach to Jericho,—this is the 
modern village of El-Lazarieh, which derives its name from its clustering 
round the traditional site of the one house and grave which give it an 
undying interest. High in the distance are the Perean mountains; the 
foreground is the deep descent to the Jordan valley. On the further side 
of that dark abyss Martha and Mary knew that Christ was abiding when 
they sent their messengers,- up that long ascent they had often watched 
his approach; up that long ascent He came when, outside the village, 
Martha and Mary met Him, and the Jews stood round weeping.’ 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 


413 


had gone before, and indicates how it came to pass that 
the safer and more retired life of the Lord (see x. 39-42) 
was brought to a close, and He once more drawn into the 
perilous neighbourhood of the city which was the head¬ 
quarters of his bitterest foes. Lazarus, who appears now 
for the first time in the Evangelical history, and the 
manner of whose introduction marks that he was one 
hitherto unknown to St. John’s readers, is described by 
him as ‘from {diro) Bethany, of {s/c) the town of Mary and 
Martha.’ Some have urged that these two prepositions 
denote different facts, the first the place of his present 
residence, namely Bethany, the second the town or village 
from which he originally came.^ But this is assuredly a 
mistake. The later clause is added not as stating a new 
fact, but to prevent any misapprehension in one mentioned 
just before, to make plain, which Bethany was intended. 
There were two villages of this name. In addition to this 
Bethany, another ‘ beyond Jordan; ’ for ‘ Bethany,’ not 
‘ Bethabara,’ is the proper reading of John i. 28. It was 
so read, Origen assures us, in nearly all copies of his day; 
and ^ Bethany,’ having the authority of the best MSS. and 
of most of the elder Versions, has now obtained a place in 
all our best critical editions. Lazarus might be, and was, 
unknown to St. John’s readers, but with Mary and Martha 
they were familiar. The Evangelist has not himself named 
them yet; but here as everywhere he assumes an acquaint¬ 
ance on the part of his readers with the preceding Gospels, 
and in St. Luke’s, as all are aware, the two sisters, though 
not the brother, appear (x. 38-42). When therefore he 

* Greswell, for example, in an ingenious essay, On the Village of Mary 
and Martha {Bissert. vol. ii. p. 545). But a change of the preposition with 
no change of the meaning, such as we have here, is sufficiently common 
in Greek j see Sophocles, Electra, 700, seq.; and Kiihner, Greek Gramm. 
vol. ii. p. 319; see moreover John i. 44, where exactly the same use of 
uTTo and Ik occurs, and which is qiute decisive in respect of their intention 
here. It may, indeed, be a question whether the comma after Lazarus 
should not be removed, and Lazarus of Bethany (= Lazarus Bethaniensis) 
be read in one breath. 


THE UAlSim OF LAZAEVS, 


designates Bethany as ‘ the town of Mary and Maftlia* La 
at cnce makes evident vs'Lich Bethany he meant. 

Let me say by the way that this reference leaves little 
donbt upon my mind that the ‘ certain village/ ^ in which 
the sisters at an earlier day received the Lord, was it¬ 
self Bethany (Luke x. 38-42). It is unlikely, though of 
course not impossible, that they should in the brief interval 
have changed the place of their habitation ; and the only 
plausible argument against the identifying of that village 
with Bethany, namely that the little history would be then 
narrated out of its due order and in the midst of the 
Galilean ministry of the Lord, is not of much weight. 
In the narrating of events, the Evangelists have in several 
instances departed from the law of mere historic succession, 
marshalling and grouping them according to a higher 
spiritual law. St. Luke had just recorded the parable of 
the Good Samaritan, with that ‘ Go and do thou likewise,’ 
which constitutes the moral of the whole. But this active 
doing, he will teach us next, must never be dissociated 
from the inner rest of the spirit, nor degenerate into a 
mere bustling outward activity; and Martha as she there 
appears, and as she is there rebuked, is a needful warning 
against a misapplication of that ‘ Go and do,’ addressed to 
the Scribe. One Scripture is set over against and balances 
the other. Another proof that St. John assumes the 
acquaintance of his readers with the preceding Gospel, we 
may trace in his putting, on this his first mention of the 
sisters, Mary before Martha. There are many reasons for 
supposing that Mary was the younger; external reasons, 
as that the house was not hers but Martha’s, that Martha 
resents being deprived of the power to order her sister 
about; and internal probabilities no less, the order of 
grace continually going counter to the order of nature, God 
reversing the prerogatives of the flesh (i Cor. i. 26-29); 

^ Ki-V?? tkere as here, though translated there ‘ village,’ and here 
^ town.’ 


Tim nAISmG OF LAZAFUS. 


4^5 


fts in Isaac, Jacob, Josepli, and David (i Sam. xvi. 11), 
was eminently shown; and not improbably in'Mary. But 
the Evangelist having claimed for her this once her place 
of spiritual prerogative, as the elder in the spiritual birth, 
she falls back in his narrative into her natural as distin¬ 
guished from her spiritual place, and is henceforward 
named not before, but after her sister (ver. 5, 19). 

What the exact constitution of the household may have 
been, it is impossible to say, the Gospels being singularly 
frugal in circumstantial notices concerning the persons 
they introduce, only relating so much as is absolutely 
necessary to make the history intelligible. Perhaps Martha 
was an early widow, with whom Mary and a younger 
brother, Lazarus, dwelt; Hengstenberg, rejecting this sup¬ 
position, will have her to have been the wife of Simon—at 
whose house (see Matt. xxvi. 6) the feast recorded in the 
next chapter was made—and has a most elaborate discus¬ 
sion for the purpose of proving this, and that the anoint¬ 
ing of our Lord at a meal took place only once; that this 
Simon, therefore, is identical with Simon the Pharisee 
(Luke vii. 36-50), and Mary that sat at Jesus’ feet and 
heard his word with the ‘ woman that was a sinner.’ One 
had hoped that the identification of these two had been 
definitively set aside ; . but late experience has shown that 
there is no question from the smallest to the greatest 
which may not be opened anew. It would lead too far 
astray from the purpose of this volume to follow his argu¬ 
ments ; I must content myself with saying that, ingenious 
as they must be owned, they have not in the least con¬ 
vinced me; and so pass on to the miracle before us. ‘ It 
was that Mary/ the Evangelist proceeds to say, ‘ which 
anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her 
hair, whose brother Lazarus was sicTcI He will distinguish 
her by that notable deed of hers from all the other Maries 
of the Evangelical history ; even as with his commemora¬ 
tion of it the fulfilment of Matt. xxvi. 13 begins. An he 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 


has not himself as yet recorded that anointing, however ho 
may do so by and by and when the fit time shall arrive 
(xii. 2-8), here too he assumes a familiarity on the part of 
his readers with those two earlier Gospels in which it is 
related at length (Matt. xxvi. 6 ; Mark xiv. 3). 

‘ Therefore his sisters sent unto Him, saying, Lord, hehold, 
he whom Thou lovest is sich’ We know not how often 
the Lord had been an inmate of that house at Bethany. 
One memorable occasion, with its word of warning love to 
one of its inmates, we know of before this time (Luke 
X. 41, 42) ; and when later than this, during the Great 
Week, He lodged in Bethany (Matt. xxi. 17 ; Mark xi. ii, 
19), returning thither for the night after the task of the day 
in the unfriendly city was over, and again repairing with the 
early morning to the city, He can scarcely have honoured 
any other roof than this with his presence. How, there¬ 
fore, when there is sorrow there, they turn in their need 
to Him, whom they may have themselves already proved 
an effectual helper in the day of trouble, who at any rate 
has shown Himself such in the extremest necessities of 
others. He is at a distance, beyond Jordan ; having with¬ 
drawn thither from the malice of his adversaries (John. x. 
39, 40; cf. i. 28); but the place of his retirement is 
known to the friendly family, and their messenger finds his 
way to Him with the tidings of danger and distress. 
Very beautiful is it to observe their confidence in Him; 
they do not urge Him to come, they only state their need. 
This, they take for granted, will be sufficient; for He does 
not love and forsake them whom He loves.^ It is but a 
day’s journey from the one Bethany to the other; they 
may securely count that help will not tarry long. 

‘ When Jesus heard that. He said. This sickness is not 
unto death,^ hut for the glory of God, that the Son of God 

Augustin© (^In Ev. Joh. tract, xl.): Non dixerunt, Vcni. Anianti 
enim tantummodo nimtiandum fiiit. . . . Siifficit ut noveris ^ non enim 
amas et deseris. 

* IVc havaix.v— 2 avamnoc, \ John V. i6; cf. i Kin. xvii. 17; Z Kin. 
XX. 1 (LXX), where of Hezekiah it is said, ’qppMarrjctv tig Odvarov, 


THE BAISINO- OF LAZARUS. 


417 

might he glorified thereby, This saying, addressed to the 
messenger, is for him to carry back to them who sent him, 
is indeed spoken to them (see ver. 40, where Christ with 
his, ‘Said I not unto thee^ refers Martha to these very 
words). They are purposely enigmatical, and must greatly 
have tried the faith of the sisters. By the time that the 
messenger brought them back, Lazarus was already dead. 
Sorely therefore must this confident assurance of a hap¬ 
pier issue have perplexed them. Had their divine Friend 
deceived them ? or had He been Himself deceived ? Why 
had He not shut out all room for mischance by Himself 
coming; or, if aught had hindered this, by speaking that 
word which, far off as near, was effectual to heal, which 
He had spoken for others, for those that were wellnigh 
strangers to Him, and had saved them? (Matt. viii. 13 ; 
John iv. 50.) But, as with so many other of the divine 
promises, which seem to us for the moment to have utterly 
failed, and this because we so little dream of the resources 
of the Divine love, and are ever putting human limitations 
on them, so was it with this word,—a perplexing riddle, 
till the event made it plain. Even now, in the eyes of 
Him who saw the end from the beginning, that sickness 
was ^ not unto death ; ’ and this they too should acknow¬ 
ledge, when through the grave and gate of death their 
brother had entered on a higher life than any which 
hitherto he had known. For this we may confidently 
assume, that ii was a higher life to which Lazarus was 
recalled. That sickness of his was ‘for the glory of God ; ’ 
in which ‘ glory ^ was included the perfecting of his own 
spiritual being, as we cannot doubt that it was perfected 
through this wondrous crisis of his life. But all this, 
which was so much for him, was also a signal moment in 
the gradual revelation of the glory of Christ to the world. 
The Son of God was first glorified in Lazarus, and then on 
and through him to the world; compare the exact parallel^ 
John ix. 2, 3. 


TEB BAISim OF LAZAMUB. 


418 

Some connect the words next ensuing, ^ Wow Jesus loved * 
Martha^ and her sister^ and Lazarus^ with what goes be¬ 
fore, find in them an explanation of the message, and of the 
confidence which the sisters entertain in the Lord’s help; 
some with the verse which follows, and understand St. 
John to be bringing into strongest contrast the Lord’s love 
to the distressed family at Bethany, and his tarrying not¬ 
withstanding for two days where He was, even after their 
cry of distress had reached Him; to be suggesting to the 
thoughtful reader all that is involved in a love which 
waited so long, before it stepped in to save. But this verse 
is better connected not with one, but with two which follow. 
St. John would say: Jesus loved Martha and the others; 

^ when He had heard therefore that Lazarus was side, He 
abode two days where He was; ’ but ‘ then after that saith 
He to his disciples. Let us go into Judeea again,^ as one who 
could not endure to remain longer away from those so 
loved, and so urgently needing his presence.’^ To conceive 
any other reason for his tarrying where He was during 
those two days, than that He might have scope for that 
great miracle, as, for example, that He had in hand some 
signal work for the kingdom of God where He was, such 
as would not endure interruption, which therefore He 
could not quit for the most urgent calls of private friend¬ 
ship, is extremely unnatural (see x. 41, 42). Had it been 
‘/or the glory of God,’ He who could have sent his word 
and healed (Matt. viii. 13; xv. 28; John iv. 50), would 
not have failed so to do. This tarrying was rather a part 

^ ’HyuTTa here; hut (pi\e 1 c, ver. 3. This last word might well he used 
in regard of Christ’s love to the brother ; hut it would have been con¬ 
trary to the fine decorum of the language of Scripture to use it now that 
the sisters are included in his love. Not till after the Ascension did the 
restraints which limited the relations even of the Son of man to women 
altogether fall away. He checked Mary Magdalene, when she would 
have anticipated the time (John xx. 17). 

* Maldonatus: Credo rationem tacite reddere [Evangelistam] cur 
efsi non statim ierit, postea tarnen ierit suo tempore, quasi dicat, non po- 
iuisse illorum, quos tantopere diligebat, ohlivisci, fixum in ejus animo - 
mansisse nuntium aegritudinis Lazari. 


THE MAI SING OF LAZARUS. 


419 


of tlie severe jet gracious discipline of divine love. Tlie 
need must attain to tlie highest, before He interferes. It 
is often thus. He intervenes with mighty help, but not 
till every other help, not until, to the weak faith of man, 
even his own promise, has seemed utterly to have failed. 

But now, when all things are ready for Him, ^ saith He 
to his disciples, Let us go into Judcea again I This mention 
of Judaea brings out the danger more strongly than 
Bethany of itself would have done. The wondering and 
trembling disciples remonstrate; ^ Master, the Jews of late 
sought to stone Thee’ (see x. 31, 39), ‘and goest Thou thither 
again?’ The necessity of hiding from their malice had 
brought Him to those safer haunts beyond Jordan, and 
will He now aJffront that danger anew ? In these remon¬ 
strances of theirs there spake out a true love to their 
Master; but mingled with this love apprehensions for 
their own safety, as is presently made plain by the words 
of Thomas (ver. 16), who takes it for granted that to 
return with Him is to die with Him. To keep this in 
mind, will help us to understand the answer of the Lord: 
^ Are there not twelve hours in the day ? ’ or, rather, ‘ Are not 
the hours of the day twelve ? ’ And then He proceeds : ‘ If 
any man walk in the day, he stumhleth not, because he seeth 
the light of this world,’ This saying of his we may para¬ 
phrase thus : ‘ Is there not a time, which is not cut short 
or abridged by premature darkness, but consists of twelve 
full hours,* during any part of which a man may walk and 
work without stumbling,—for such stumbling is quite ex¬ 
ceptional then (Isai. lix. 10; Hos. iv. 5),—being enlightened 

^ Maldonatus: Certum esse atque statum spatium diei, quod minui non 
possit; diiodecim enim constare horis ; intra id spatium si quis ambulat, 
eine periculo ambulare. Calvin: Vocatio Dei instar lucis diumse est, 
quae nos errare vel impingere non patitur. Quisquis ergo Dei verbo ob- 
temperat, nec quidquam aggreditur nisi ejus jussu, ilium quoque habere 
eaelo duceni et directorem, et hac fiducia secure et intrepide viam ampere 
potest. Cf. Ps. xc. II. Grotius: Quanto ergo magis tuto ambulo, qui 
praelucentem mihi habeo lucem supracaelestem, ac divinam cognitionem 
Petenii propositi. 


^^0 


THE RAISING OF ZAZARl/S. 


by tbe liglit of this world (Gen. i. 15, 16), by the natural 
Bun in the heavens ? Such an unconcluded day there is 
now for Me, a day during any part of which I can safely 
accomplish the work given Me by my Father, whose light 
I, in like manner, behold.' So long as the day, the time 
appointed by my Father for my earthly walk, endures, so 
long as there is any work for Me yet to accomplish, I am 
safe, and you are safe in my company.’ Compare similar 
words spoken under similar circumstances of danger, 
John ix. 4. And then, leaving all allusion to Himself, 
and contemplating his disciples alone. He links another 
thought to this, and warns them that they never walk 
otherwise than as seeing Him who is the Light of men,— 
that they undertake no task, and affront no danger, unless 
looking to Him, who can alone make their darkness to be 
light; ‘hut if a man walk in the night, he stumhleth, because 
there is no light in himi In these last words there is a 
forsaking of the figure, which would have required some¬ 
thing of this kind, ^ because there is no light above him; ’ 
but in the spiritual world it is one and the same thing not 
to see the light above us, and not to have it in us; they 
only having it in them, who see it above them (cf. i John 
ii. 8-11). 

‘ These things said He: and after that He saith unto them. 
Our friend ^ Lazarus sleejgeth; but I go, that I may awake 
him out of sleejpI We must not explain this announcement 
by supposing the Lord to have received newer and later 
tidings from the house of sickness, informing Him that 
it is now the house of death; but rather by the inner 
power of his spirit He knows how it has fared with his 
friend. In language how simple does He speak of the 
mighty work which He is about to accomplish; such as 
shall rather extenuate than enhance its greatness : he has 

' Bengel: Jam raulta erat kora, sed tamen adhuc erat dies. 

* Bengel, on tke words 6 (piXoq r/juaiv : Quanta kumanitate Jesus ami- 
citiam suam cum discipuiis communicat. 


THE BAISma OF LAZAMUS. 


421 


fallen asleep and needs to be awakened. ^ Then said his 
disoiples^ Lord^ if he sleep^ he shall do well / ’ for, as the 
Evangelist informs ns, ‘ they thought that He had spoTcen of 
talcing of rest in sleep,^ This often marks the favonrable 
crisis in sickness; and they, eagerly seizing upon any plea 
for not returning as into the jaws of destruction, take for 
granted that it does so here.^ What need that their 
beloved Lord should expose Himself, and with Himself 
them, to extreme peril, when without his presence all was 
going well ? The contemplation of death as a sleep is so 
common,^ has been so taken up into the symbolism, con¬ 
scious or unconscious, of all nations, that it was no difiS.- 
culty in the image itself which occasioned the misunder¬ 
standing upon their part; but, his words being capable of 
a figurative or a literal, sense, they erroneously accept 
them in the latter.^ They make a similar mistake at 
Matt. xvi. 6-12; and probably one not very dissimilar, 
Luke xxiL 38; cf. Jer. xiii. 12. ‘Then saith Jesus unto 
them plainly, Lazarus is dead ; and I am glad for your sdkes 
that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe,* He anti¬ 
cipates the thought which could hardly not have risen up 
in their minds, namely, why He had not been there to 
save. Through that absence of his there should be a 
fuller revelation of the glory of God than could have been 
from his earlier presence; a revelation that should lead 
them, and in them all the Church, to loftier stages of 

^ Grotius: Discipuli omnimodo qugerunt Dominum ab isto itinere 
avocare. Ideo omnibus utuntur argumentis. Calvin: Libenter hano 
fugiendi periculi occasionem arripiunt. 

* Thus in the exquisite epigram of Callimachus, x. 68 : 

de 'Eatov 6 AiKiorog, 'kKavQioq, tepot^ vttvov 
Koi^iarai' Oi^rjaKtiv p.r) Xsye tvv(; dyaOovg. 

3 Such an use of KoipdaSai is frequent in the Old Testament (2 Chron. 
xiv. i; Isai. xiv. 8; Jer. li. 57; Job xiv. 12; Dan. xii. 2); nor less in the 
New (Matt, xxvii. 52; Acts vii. 60; xiii. 36; i Cor. vii. 39; xi. 30; xv. 
6, 18, 20, 51; I Thess. iv. 13, 14, 15; ^ Tet. iii. 4): so icoifirpc, Ecclus. 
tlvi. 19. We have a corresponding use of Job xiv. 12: "Av- 

epwTtog Se Koifin^tlg ov fiT)v dvaary £a)f dv 6 ovpavcg oh prj avppafy, Kai ovk 
\tvTTvin8rj(T0VTai vttvov avrCjv, 


THE BAISma OF LAZABUS. 


422 

faith, to a deeper recognition of Himself, as the Lord of 
life and of death. He is glad, for his disciples’ sake, that 
it thns had befallen; for had He been npon the spot. He 
could not have suffered the distress of those so dear to Him 
to reach the highest point, but must have interfered at an 
earlier moment. 

When He summons them now to go, ‘ Nevertheless, let us 
go unto him/ it is plain that for ane disciple at least the 
anticipation of death, as the certain consequence of this 
perilous journey, is not overcome. ‘ Then said Thomas, 
which is called Didymus, to his fellow-disciples,^ Let us also 
go, that we may die with Him ; ’ that is, with Christ; for to 
refer these words, as some have done, to Lazarus, is idle. 
Hot to urge objections which lie deeper, it is sufficient to 
observe that the words indicate . not merely fellowship in 
death, but in dying, which was manifestly impossible in 
the case of one already dead. On two other occasions 
Thomas is introduced with the same interpretation of his 
name, the same reminder on the part of the Evangelist to 
his Greek reader that Thomas in the Hebrew is equivalent 
to Didymus, that is twin or double, in the Greek (xx. 24; 
xxi. 2). Is there any mystery here ? did St. John intend 
us to see any significance in this name, any coming out in 
the man of the qualities which it expressed ? Many, both 
in ancient times and in modern, have thought he did; 
and certainly the analogy of other similar notices in this 
Gospel, none of which can be regarded as idle (i. 42 ; ix. 7), 
would lead to this conclusion. It is very possible that 
Thomas may have received this as a new name from his 
Lord, even as Simon and the sons of Zebedee certainly, 
and Levi very probably, received in like manner names 
from Him. It was a name which told him all he had to 
fear, and all he had to hope. In him the twins, unbelief 
and faith, were contending with one another for mastery, 

' 'ZvfxuaQtjrrjr, only here in the New Testament, occurs once in Plato, 
Eidhyd. 272 c. 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS, 


423 


as Esau and Jacob, tbe old man and tbe new, wrestled 
once in Eebecca’s womb (Gen. xxv. 23, 24). He was, as 
indeed all are by nature, tbe double or twin-minded man.* 
It was for bim to see tbat in and tbrougb tbe regeneration 
be obtained strength to keep tbe better, and to cast away 
tbe worse, balf of bis being. He bere utters words wbicb 
belong to one of tbe great conflicts of bis life. They are 
words in wbicb tbe old and tbe new, unbelief and faitb, 
are botb speaking, partly one and partly tbe other; and 
St. John very fitly bids us note tbat in this there was tbe 
outcoming of all wbicb bis name embodied so well.^ For 
indeed in this saying of bis there is a very singular 
blending of faitb and belief,—faitb, since be counted it 
better to die with bis Lord than to live forsaking Him,— 
unbelief, since be conceived it possible tbat so long as bis 
Lord bad a work to accomplish. He, or any under tbe 
shield of bis presence, could be overtaken by a peril wbicb 
should require them to die together. Thomas was evi¬ 
dently of a melancholic desponding character; most true 
to bis Master, yet ever inclined to look at things on their 
darkest side, finding it most bard to raise himself to tbe 
loftier elevations of faitb,—to believe other and more than 
be saw (John xiv. 5; xx. 25), or to anticipate more 
favourable issues than those wbicb tbe merely human 
probabilities of an event portended.^ Men of all tempera- 


1 ’Avr]p Siij/vxoc, Jam.'i. 8; cf. iv. 8; compare Horace (^Carm. i. 6. 7): 
Duplex Ulysses. 

* All this has been excellently brought out by Hengstenberg (in loc.). 
He has, however, as is observed above, forerunners here. Thus Theo- 
phylact accounts for St. John’s interpretation of the name Thomas, that 
he wished to indicate the congruity between the man and his name (iVa 
hxiy vfuv 6 ri SiaraKTiKog rig ^v). And Lampe: Nomen Thomae significa- 
tivum fuisse, facile mihi persuaserim. Idque eo magis, quia nulla alias 
Buppetit ratio tertia vice ab Evangelista nostro repetiti hujus nominis 
interpretamenti, nisi sublimius aliquid hie lateret. He then refers, but 
doubtfully, to that passage, namely Gen. xxv. 24-26, in which the key to 
the explanation of the name must be found. 

3 Maldonatus: Theodorus Mopsuest,, Chrysostomus, et Euthymius recte 
fortasse indicant hsec verba, quamvis magnam audaciae speciem prae se 


1-24 THE BAISING OF LAZARUS, 

ments and all characters were within that first and nearest 
circle of disciples, that they might be the representatives 
and helpers of all who hereafter, through one difficulty 
and another, should attain at last to the full assurance of 
faith. Yery beautifully Chrysostom ^ says of this disciple, 
that he who now would hardly venture to go with Jesus as 
far as to the neighbouring Bethany, afterwards without 
Him, without, that is, his bodily presence, travelled to the 
ends of the world, to the furthest India, daring all the 
perils of remote and hostile nations. 

Martha and Mary would have hardly ventured to claim 
help from the Lord, till the sickness of their brother had 
assumed an alarming character. Lazarus probably died 
upon the same day that the messenger announcing his 
illness had reached the Lord; otherwise it could scarcely 
have been said that when Jesus came, ‘ he had lain in the 
grave four days already.^ The day of the messenger’s 
arrival on this calculation would be one day; two other 
our Lord abode in Persea after He had received the 
message; and one more,—for it was but the journey of a 
single day,—He would employ in the journey to Bethany. 
Dying upon that day, Lazarus, according to the custom of 
the Jews, that burial should immediately follow on death 
(Acts v. 6-1 o), had been buried upon the same, as a com¬ 
parison of this verse with ver. 39 clearly shows. 

But before the arrival of Him, the true Comforter, other 
comforters, some formal, all weak, had arrived; drawn to 
this house of mourning by the providence of God, who 
would have many witnesses and heralds of this might¬ 
iest among the wondrous works of his Son. The nearness 
of Bethany to Jerusalem will have allowed these to be 
the more numerous; it is therefore noticed here: ‘ Now 

ferant, non aiidacis sed timidi esse hominis, amantis tamen Christum, a 
quo eum certum mortis, ut putabat, periculum avellere non posset, 
hengel; Erat quasi medius inter banc vitam et mortem, sine tristitia et 
sine Isetitia paratus ad moriendum j non tamen sine fide. 

* In Joh. Horn. Ixii, 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 


425 


Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off,* 
that is, about two miles; ‘ and many of the Jews came to 
Martha and Mary,^ to comfort them concerning their brother.* 
It was part of the Jewish ceremonial of grief, which was 
all most accurately defined,^ that there should be a large 
gathering of friends and acquaintance, not less than 
ten, to condole with those that mourned for their dead 
(i Chron. vii. 22; Job ii. ii). Such condolence was 
sometimes, and on the part of some, the true ‘ sons of 
consolation,’ a reality ; yet oftentimes a heartless formality 
on the one side (Job’s comforters have become a byeword), 
as an aggravation of grief on the other; at times it was a 
treacherous mockery, when the very authors of the grief 
offered themselves as the comforters in it (Gen. xxxvii. 35). 
But now Re comes, who could indeed comfort the mourners, 
and wipe away tears from their eyes. Yet He enters not 
the house; that was already occupied by ‘ the Jews,* by 
those for the most part alien, even where they were not 
hostile, to Him. Hot amid the disturbing influences of 
that uncongenial circle shall his first interview with the 
sorrowing sisters find place. Probably He tarried outside 
the town, and not very far from the spot where Lazarus 
was buried; for else when Mary went to meet Him, the 
Jews could scarcely have exclaimed, ^ She goeth unto the 
grave to weep there* (ver. 31). Prom thence He may have 
suffered the tidings to go before Him that He was at hand. 

‘ Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, 

^ Ai 'irtpi Map9cn> Kal Maplar, to signify Martha and Mary themselves, 
is an idiom familiar to all, and occurs again, Acts xiii. 13. Still it would 
scarcely be used, at least in the better times of the language, concerning 
any who had not friends and attendants round them, who were not, so to 
speak, the centre of a circle. Thus Lampe rightly: Nec facile occurret 
phrasis nisi de personis illustribus, qui amicorum aut ministrorum grege 
cincti erant. Colligi ergo ex ea quoque hie potest quod Martha et Maria 
lautioris fortunae fuerint. 

- The days of mourning were thirty: of these the three first were days 
of weeping {^eius) : then followed seven of lamentation (plauctus); the 
remaining twenty of mourning (moeror). See the art. ^ Mourning,’ in the 
Diet, of tlie Bible. 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 


426 

went and met Him ; hut Mary sat still in the housed We 
are not, in this hastening of the one and tarrying of the 
other, to “trace, as many have done, the different cha¬ 
racteristics of the two sisters, or to find a parallel here to 
Luke X. 39. For on that former occasion, when Mary 
chose to sit still, she did so because it was at ‘ Jesus^ feet ^ 
that she was sitting; this nearness to Him, and not the 
sitting still, was then the attraction. The same motives 
which kept her in stillness there, would now have brought 
her on swiftest wings of love to the place where the Master 
was. Moreover, so soon as ever she did hear that her 
Lord was come and called for her, ^ she arose quicMy, and 
came unto Him ^ (ver. 29). ‘ It was not,’to use Chrysostom’s 

words, ‘ that Martha was now more zealous; but Mary 
had not heard.’ This much characteristic of the two 
sisters may very probably lie in the narrative, namely, 
that Martha, engaged in active employments even in the 
midst of her grief, may have been more in the way of hearing 
what was happening abroad, while Mary, in her deeper 
and stiller anguish, was sitting retired in the house,^ and 
less within reach of such rumours from the outer world ^ 
Martha too is ready to change words with Christ; while 
the deeper anguish of Mary finds utterance in that one 
phrase : ^ Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not 
died ; ’ and then she is silent. This word indeed is common 
to both; for it is the bitterest drop in their common cup 
of anguish, that all might so easily have been other¬ 
wise. Had this sickness befallen at another moment, 
when their Lord was within easier reach, all might have 
been averted; they might have been rejoicing in a 

1 On sitting as the attitude of grief see Neh. i. 4; Job ii. 8,13; Ezek. 
Tiii. 14; Matt, xxvii. 61. 

* Maldonatus: Quia enim dixerat Martbam obviam Christo processisse, 
ne quis miraretur, aut Mariam accusaret quod non et ipsa processisset, 
excusat earn tacite, dicens sedisse domi, ideoque nihil de Christi adventu 
cognovisse. Martha enim cognovit, quia credibile est domo aliqua causa 
fuisse progressam, et solent qui foils in publico versantur, multos colligere 
rumores, quos ignorant, qui domi delitescunt. 


TEE BAISINa OF LAZARUS. 


427 

Jving, instead of mourning over a dead, brother. At the 
same time to imagine that there is anj the slightest re¬ 
proach latent in the words is quite to misconceive the 
spirit in which they are uttered. In their way they are 
words rather of faith. But Martha has much more to 
say. There are hopes, though she ventures only at a 
distance to allude to them, which she is cherishing still: 

‘ But I "know that even now, even now when all seems over, 
whatsoever Thou wilt ask ^ of God, God will give it Thee.* 
High thoughts and poor thoughts of Christ cross one 
another here;—high thoughts, in that she sees in Him 
one whose effectual fervent prayers will greatly prevail;— 
poor thoughts, in that she regards Him as obtaining by 
prayer that which indeed He has by the oneness of his 
nature with the Father.^ 

With words purposely ambiguous, being meant for the 
trying of her faith, Jesus assures her that the deep, though 
unuttered, longing of her heart shall indeed be granted : 
‘ Thy brother shall rise again.* But though her heart could 
take in the desire for so immense a boon, it cannot take 
in its actual granting (cf. Acts xii. 5, 15) ; it shrinks back 
half in unbelief from the receiving of it. She cannoi 
believe that these words mean more than that he, with ah 
other faithful Israelites, will stand in his lot at the last 
day; and with a slight movement of impatience at such 
cold comfort, comfort that so little met the present 
longings of her heart, which were to have her brother 
now, she answers, ^ I know that he shall rise again in the 
resurrection at the last day.* Her love was as yet earthly, 
clinging passionately to the earthly objects of its affection, 
but needing to be infinitely exalted and purified. Unless 

1 She uses alrth> (^ona av airr]ay), a word never employed by our Lord 
to express his own asking of the Father, but always spu)Tai>: for there is 
a certain familiarity, nay authority, in his askings, which Bpujrdv expresses, 
but alrslv would not; see my Synonyms of the New Testament, § 40. 

2 Grotius : Et hie infirmitas apparet. Putat ilium gratiosum esse apud 
Deum, non autem in illo esse plenitudinem Divinae potestatis, 

19 


428 


THE nATSTNQ OF LAZARUS. 


the Lord had lifted her into a higher region of life, it 
wonld have profited her little that He had granted her 
heart’s desire.^ VYhat wonld it have helped her to receive 
back her brother, if again she was presently to lose him, 
if once more they were to be parted asunder by his death 
or her own ? This lower boon would only prove a boon at 
all, if both were alike made partakers of a higher life in 
Christ; then, indeed, death would have no more power 
over them, then they would truly possess one another, and 
for ever: and to this the wondrously deep and loving 
words of Christ would lead her. They are no unseasonable 
preaching of truths remote from her present needs, but 
the answer to the very deepest need of her soul; they 
would lead her from a lost brother to a present Saviour, a 
Saviour in whom alone that brother could be truly and for 
ever found. ^ Jesus said unto her, I am the Resurrection, 
and the Life-, the everlasting triumphs over death, they 
are in Me —no remote benefits, as thou speakest of now, 
to find place at the last day ; no powers separate or separable 
from Me, as thou spakest of lately, when thou desiredst that 
I should ask of Another that which I possess evermore in 
Myself. In Me is victory over the grave, in Me is life eternal: 
by faith in Me that becomes yours which makes death 
not to be death, but only the transition to a better life.’ 

Such is the general meaning and scope of these glorious 
words. When we ask ourselves what this title, ‘ The 
Resurrection,’ involves, we perceive that in one aspect it is 
something more, in another something less, than that 
other title of ^ The Life,’ which Christ also challenges for 
his own. It is more, for it is life in conflict with and over¬ 
coming death ; it is life being the death of death, meeting 
it in its highest manifestation, that of physical dissolution 

^ This is the sublime thought of Wordsworth’s Laodamia. She who 
gives her name to that sublime poem does not lift herself, she has none 
to lift her, into those higher regions in which the return of the beloved 
would be a blessing and a boon; and thus it proves to her a joyless, dis¬ 
appointing gift, presently again to be snatched away. 


THE EAISING OF LAZARUS. 


429 

and decay, and vanqnisliing’ it there (Isai. xxv. 8 ; xxri. 19; 
Dan. xii. 2). It is less, for so long as that title belongs to 
Him, it implies something still undone, a mortality not 
yet wholly swallowed up in life, a last enemy not yet 
wholly destroyed and put under his feet (i Cor. xv. 25, 26). 
As He is ‘ the Resurrection ’ of the dead, so is He ‘ the Life’ 
of the living—absolute life, having life in Himself, for so it 
has been given Him of the Father (John v. 26), the one 
fountain of life; ^ so that all who receive not life from Him 
pass into the state of death, first the death of the spirit, 
and then, as the completion of their death, the death also 
of the body. 

What follows, ^ He that helieveth m Me, though he were 
dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and helieveth in 
Me shall never die,’ is not obscure in the sum total of its 
meaning; yet so to interpret it, as to prevent the two 
clauses of the sentence from containing a repetition, and to 
find progress in them, is not easy. If we compare this 
passage with John vi. 32-59, and observe the repeated 
stress which is there laid on the raising up at the last day, 
as the great quickening work of the Son of God (ver. 39, 
40, 44, 54), we shall not hesitp^te to make the declaration, 
‘yet shall he live,’ in the first clause here, to be equivalent 
to the words, ‘ I will raise him up at the last day,’ there, 
and this whole first clause will then be the unfolding of the 
words, ^ I am the Resurrection ; ’ as such He will rescue 
every one that helieveth on Him from death and the grave. 
In like manner, the second clause answers to, and is the 
expansion of, the more general declaration, ‘ I am the Life ; ’ 
that is, ^Whosoever liveth, every one that draweth the 
breath of life and helieveth upon Me, shall know the power 
of an everlasting life, shall never truly die.’ Here, as so 
often in our Lord’s words, the temporal death is taken no 
account of, but quite overlooked, and the believer in Him 

* ‘0 (Lev. i. 8); b ^uioTroiCjp (E-om. iv. 17); rj Km) rj/xuiv (Col. iii. 
4); Trrjyr) (Ps. xxxv. 9); 6 /j. 6 vo(; aQavaaiav (i Tim. vi. 16), 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS, 


t -30 

is contemplated as already lifted above death, and made 
partaker of everlasting life (John vi. 47 ; cf. Ephes. ii. 6; 
I John hi. 14).^ 

Having claimed all this for Himself, He demands of 
Martha whether she can receive it: ^ Believest thou this ,— 
that I am this Lord of life and of death ? Doth thy faith in 
tho divine verities of the resurrection and eternal life after 
death centre in Me ? ’ Her answer, ^ Yea, Lord, I believe 
that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come 
into the world ^ (i. 9 ; vi. 14; Matt. xi. 3), is perhaps more 
direct than at first sight it appears. For one of the offices 
of Christ the Messiah was, according to the Jewish ex¬ 
pectations, to raise the dead; and thus, confessing Him to 
be the Christ, she implicitly confessed Him also to be the 
quickener of the dead. Or she may mean,—^ I believe all 
glorious things concerning Thee ; there is nought which I 
do not believe concerning Thee, since I believe Thee to be 
Him in whom every glorious gift for the world is centred,’ 
—speaking like one whose faith, as that of most persons at 
all times must be, was implicit rather than explicit; she 
did not know all which that name, ‘ the Christ, the Son of 
God,’ involved, but all which it did involve she was ready 
to believe. 

She says no more; for now she will make her sister 
partaker of the joyful tidings that He, the long waited for, 
long desired, is arrived at last. Some good thing too, it 
may be, she expects from his high and mysterious words, 
though she knows not precisely what: a ray of comfort 
has found its way into her heart, and she would fain make 
her sister a sharer in this. Yet she told not her tidings 
openly, suspecting, and having good cause to suspect (ver. 
46), that some of their visitors from Jerusalem might be 
of unfriendly disposition towards the Lord. ‘ She called 
Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and 

^ Bengel: Mors Cliristi mortem enervavit. Post mortem Christi mors 
credeutium non est mors. 


TEE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 


431 

talleth for thee,^ ‘ The Master ’ was a name, probably the 
name, by wbicb the Lord was known in the innermost 
circle of his own (Matt, xxiii. 8). That He had asked for 
Mary, we had not hitherto learned. ‘As soon as she heard 
that, she arose quickly, and came unto Him.’ The Jews take 
it for granted that she is hastening in a paroxysm of her 
grief to the grave, to weep there ; as it was the custom of 
Jewish women often to visit the graves of their kindred,^ and 
this especially during the first days of their mourning;— 
and they follow; for thus was it provided of God that this 
miracle should have many witnesses. ‘ Then when Mary 
was come where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at his 
feet.’ * Hothing of the kind is recorded of Martha (ver. 20), 
whether this be the accident of a fuller narrative in one 
place than in the other; or that we have here a character¬ 
istic touch differencing one sister from the other. But 
even if their demeanour is different, their first words are 
the same: ‘ Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had 
not died.’ The words with which her sister had greeted 
the Lord thus repeating themselves a second time from 
her lips, give us a glimpse of all that had passed in that 
mournful house, since the beloved was laid in earth. 
Often during that four days’ interval the sisters had said 
one to the other, how different the issues might have been, 
if the divine friend had been with them. Such had been, 
the one thought in the hearts, the one word upon the lips, 
of both, and therefore was so naturally the first spoken by 
each, and that altogether independently of the other. She 
says no more. What the Lord can do, or will do, she 
remits altogether to Him, not so much as suggesting on 
her own part ought. 

^ Rosenmiiller, Alte und Neue Morgenland, vol. iv. p. 281 ,• Geier, De 
Luctu HebrcBorum, vii. § 26. 

2 Compare Cicero’s account of his first interview with a Sicilian 
mother whom the lust and cruelty of Verres had made desolate {In 
Verr. v. 39) : Mihi obviam venit, et ita me suam salutem appellans, filii 
nomen implorans, mihi ad pedes misera jacuit, quasi ego excitare filium 
ejus ah inferis possem. 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS, 


4-32 

At tlie spectacle of all tliis grief, the sisters weeping, 
and even the more indifferent visitors from Jerusalem 
weeping likewise, the Lord also ^ groaned in the spirit, and 
was troubled^ The word which we translate ‘groaned’^ 
is far more expressive of indignation and displeasure than 
of grief; which last, save as a certain amount of it is 
contained in all displeasure, it means not at all. But at 
what and with whom was Jesus thus indignant ? The 
notion of some Greek expositors,^ that He was indignant 
with Himself,—that we have here the indications of an 
inward struggle to repress, as something weak and un- 

^ Augustine lays an emphasis on this hdpa^ev eavror, turhavit seipsiim 
(In Ev. Joh. tract, xlix ): Quis enim euni posset nisi se ipse turbare ? 
(cf. De Civ. Dei, xiv. 9. 3); and Bengel: Aifectus Jesu non fuere pas- 
siones, sed voluntarise comniotiones, quas plane in sua potestate habebat; 
et haec turbatio fnit plena ordinis et rationis summse. It would then 
express something of the perpioTrdRfta of the Academy, as opposed on the 
one side to frantic outbreaks of grief, on the other to the dTra-'em of the 
Stoics. Ilis grief no doubt did keep this mean; but this active hdputfv 
aavTov must not be pressed; since elsewhere, on similar occasions, we 
have the passive, ampaxOn np Trvtvpan (John xiii. 21 ; cf. xii. 27), with 
which this is identical. 

2 'RpiSpip.dnpai (from Ppipri, Boipio, a name of Persephone or Hecate, 
signifying The Angered, so called Sul to (poiStpbv kuI KaraTXtjKTiKov rev 
Sifi/uoiuig, Lucian; and cognate with fremo, tSoWoc, <ppijxdw') does not mean 
to be moved with any strong passion, as grief or fear, but always implies 
anger and indignation. See Passow, s. v.; and so all the Greek inter¬ 
preters; the Vulgate, which has infremuit; and Luther: Er ergrimmeto 
im Geiste. Storr (Ojmsc. Acad. vol. iii. p. 254): Quern vulgo sumunt 
tristiticB significatum, is plane incertus esse videtur, cum nullo, quod 
sciamus, exemplo confirmari possit, Graecisque patribus tarn valde ignotus 
fuerit, ut materiam ad succensendum, quamvis non repertam in Marise et 
comitum ejus ploratu, quaererent certe in humanae naturae (ttiq oaoKik) 
Jesu propensione ad tristitiam, quam Jesus . . . increpaverit. With this 
consent the other passages in the New Testament where infipindaQai is 
used, as twice of our Lord commanding, under the threat of his earnest 
displeasure, i\\OQQ whom He had healed, to keep silence (Matt. ix. 30 ; 
Mark i. 43); and once of those who were indignant with Mary in the 
matter of the ointment (koI h ejSoipun’ro aury, Mark xiv. 5). Compare 
Isai. xvii. 13 (Symmachus) and Pa. xxxviii. 4 (Symm. and Aquila), and 
ip( 3 pl[iypn opyr'ig, Jer. ii. 8 (LXX). Lampe and Kuinoel defend the right 
explanation; and Lange {Theol. Stud, und Krit. 1836, p. 714, seq.); but 
by far the completeat discussion on l-pf 3 uip.d(Tiiai, and its exact meaning 
here, is by Gumlich in these same Studien, 1862, pp. 260-268. 

’ See Suicer, Thes. s. v. Ip^piydoiiai. 


THE ^BAISING OF LAZARUS. 


433 


wortliy, tliat human pitj, which found presently its ut¬ 
terance in tears,—is not to be accepted for an instant. 
Christianity demands the regulation of the natural affec¬ 
tions, but it does not, like the Stoic philosophy, demand 
their suppression; so far from this, it bids us to ^ weep 
with them that weep ’ (Eom. xii. 15); and, in the beautiful 
words of Leighton, that we ^ seek not altogether to diy 
the stream of sorro^t, but to bound it, and keep it within 
its banks.’ Some, as Theodore of Mopsuestia and Lampe, 
suppose Him indignant in spirit at the hostile dispositions 
which He already traced and detected among the Jews 
that were present, the unbelief on their part with which 
He foresaw that great work of his would be received. 
Others, that his indignation was excited by the unbelief of 
Martha and Mary and the others, which they manifested 
in their weeping, testifying thereby that they did not 
believe that He would raise their dead. But He Himself 
wept presently, and there was nothing in these natural 
tears of theirs to rouse a feeling of displeasure. 

But this indignation of his is capable of a perfectly 
adequate explanation. It was the indignation which the 
Lord of life felt at all that sin had wrought. He beheld 
death in all its dread significance, as the wages of sin; 
the woes of a whole world, of which this was but a little 
sample, rose up before his eyes; all its mourners and all 
its graves were present to Him. For that He was about 
to wipe away the tears of those present and turn for a 
little while their sorrow into joy, did not truly alter the 
case. Lazarus rose again, but only to taste a second time 
the bitterness of death; these mourners He might comfort, 
but only for a season; these tears He might stanch, only 
again hereafter to flow; and how many had flowed and 
must flow with no such Comforter to wipe them, even for 
a season, away. As He contemplated all this, a mighty 
indignation at the author of all this woe possessed his 
heart. And now He will no longer delay, but will do at 


f 34 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 


once battle witb death and with him that batli tlie power 
of death, the devil; and spoiling, though but in part, the 
goods of the strong man armed, will give proof that a 
Stronger is hered And that they may the sooner stand 
face to face, He demands, ^ Where have 7je laid him ? They 
said unto Him, Lord, come and see, Jesus wejpt,’ ^ or, more 
accurately, ^ shed tears/^ Himself borne along with the 

' Apollinai’ius: 'Qcrd ng yewatog apicrrfvg Tovg iro\mlovg ISmv, knvrov 
TTapw^vvs Kard rwv dvriTraXiov. Melanclitlion: Fremitus indignatio quae- 
dam est qua commovetur Christus ad versus regnum mortis, volens pecca- 
tum et mortem evacuare, ut ostendat se odisse regnum mortis, nec velle 
ut pereat peccator. 

® We may compare, for purposes of contrast, tlie words of Artemis in 
that majestic concluding scene in the Hippolytus of Euripides, where, in 
the midst of his misery, Hippolytus asks, 

'Opag jjif, ^icjTTOiv’, tcv &'Xior", 

and she answers, 

'Opw, Kar’ ooGOJV b' ov O'ijxig jSaXtiy SaKpv. 

Full as is that scene of soothing and elevating power, and even of a divine 
sympathy, yet a God of tears was a higher conception than the heathen 
world could reach to. After indeed the Son of God had come, and in 
that strange and inexplicable way had begun to modify the whole feeling 
of the heathen world, long before men had even heard of his name, the 
Roman poet, in a passage among the noblest which antiquity supplies, 
could express himself thus: 

. , . mollissima corda 

Humano generi dare se natura fatetur, 

Quae lacrymas dedit: hcsc nostripars optima sensus. 

Juvenal, Sat. xv. 131-133. 

On the sinlessness of these natural affections, or rather on their necessity 
for a full humanity, see Augustine, De Oiv. Lei, xiv. 9. 3. 

* For thus the distinction, scarcely accidental, between the k-XaiovTfg 
of the others and his iSdKpvaev, would be preserved. Elsewhere (Luke 
xix. 41) the KXaUiv is itself ascribed to Him. Here, as Bengel puts it 
well, lacrymatus est, non ploravit. There is a fine passage in Spenser’s 
Fairy Queen, ii. i. 42, when Sir Guyon lights on the corpse of IViordant, 
which may or may not have been written with this passage in view. 
After describing the horror with which the spectacle of the dead filled 
Sir Guyon, the poet goes on— 

^ At last his mighty ghost gan deep to groan. 

As lion, grudging in his great disdain. 

Mourns inward^q and makes to himself moan. 

Till ruth and frail alfection did constrain 
His stout courage to stoop, and shew his inward pain.’ 


•Ime EAISmG OF LAZARUS. 


435 


great tide of sorrow and not seeking to resist it. TLere 
are yet before Him two other occasions of tears (Luke xx. 
41; Heb. v. 7). ‘ The tears of the text/ says Lonne^ ‘ are 

as a spring, a well, belonging to one household, the sisters 
of Lazarus. The tears over Jerusalem are as a river, 
belonging to a whole country. The tears upon the Cross 
(?) are as the sea, belonging to the whole world.’ 

Some of the Jews present, moved to good will by this 
lively sympathy of the Lord with the sorrows of those 
around Him, exclaimed, ^ Behold how Ke loved him! ’ Kot, 
however, all: ‘ And some of them said, Gould not this man, 
which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this 
man should not have died ? ’ It is an invidious suggestion. 
He weeps over this calamity now, but was it not in his 
power to avert it, if He had chosen ? He who could open 
the eyes of the blind (they refer to the case which, through 
the judicial investigation that followed, had made so much 
noise at Jerusalem, John ix.), could He not (by his prayer 
to God) have hindered that this man should have died? 
There were indeed in this accusation, as so often in 
similar cases, assumptions mutually contradicting one 
another; the assumption that He possessed such power 
and favour with God as would have enabled Him to stay 
the stroke of death, resting on the assumption of so 
eminent a goodness upon his part, as would have secured 
that his power should not be grudgingly restrained in any 
case suitable for its exercise. It is characteristic of the 
truth of this narrative (although it has been urged as an 
argument against it), that they, dwellers in Jerusalem, 
should refer to this miracle which had so lately been per¬ 
formed there, rather than to the previous raisings from 
the dead, which in themselves were so much more to the 
point, as evidences of that lordship over death which He 
might have exerted had He willed. But those, accom¬ 
plished at an earlier period of his ministry and in the 
remoter Galilee, they may have only heard of by obscure 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 


♦36 

repoH, if indeed they had heard of them at all. This 
miracle on the contrary, so recently wrought, and at their 
very doors, which had roused so much contradiction, 
which it ha/d been so vainly attempted to prove an impos¬ 
ture, was exactly the mighty work of the Lord that would 
be uppermost in their thoughts. Yet for all this we may 
feel sure that the maker-up of the narrative from later 
and insecure traditions would inevitably have adduced 
those miracles of a like kind, as arguments of the power 
of Jesus over death. 

He meanwhile and they have reached the tomb, though 
not without another access of that indignant horror, an¬ 
other of those mighty shudderings, which shook the frame 
of the Lord of life,—so dreadful did death seem to Him 
who, looking through all its natural causes, at which we 
often stop short, saw it altogether as the seal and token of 
sin; so unnatural did its usurpation appear over a race 
made for immortality (Wisd. i. 13, 14); ‘Jesus therefore, 
again groaning in Himself cometh to the grave."* This, as 
the whole course of the narrative shows, was without the 
town (ver. 30), according to the universal custom of the 
East (Luke vii. 12), which did not suffer a depositing of 
the dead among the living J ‘ It was a cave, and a stone 
lay upon it.* Such were commonly the family vaults of 
the Jews; sometimes natural (Gen. xxiii. 9; Judith xvi. 
23), sometimes, as was this,^ artificial and hollowed out by 
man’s labour from the rock (Isai. xxii. 16; Matt, xxvii. 60), 
in a garden (John xix. 41), or in some field the possession 
of the family (Gen. xxiii. 9, 17-20; xxxv. 18 ; 2 Kin. xxi. 
13) ; with recesses in the sides (Isai. xiv. 15), wherein the 
bodies were laid, occasionally with chambers one beyond 
another. Sometimes the entrance to these tombs was on 
a level; sometimes, as most probably here, there was a 

* Eosenmiiller, Alte und Neue Morgenland, vol. iv. p. 281. 

* Ammonius; "Aurpov Kai oin'iXaiov diafspef dvrpov jxkv rb a\)TO<i>\nc 
Kol\u}[ia* (XTT'tjXaiov de, xttjOOTroti^rov. It 18 a7Ti)\aiov hoiC. 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 


437 


descent to tliem by steps. The stone which blocked up 
the entrance, kept aloof the beasts of prey, above all the 
numerous jackals, which else might have found their way 
into these receptacles of the dead, and torn the bodies. It 
was naturally of a size and weight not easily to be moved 
away (Mark xvi. 3). The tomb of our blessed Lord Him¬ 
self, with its ^ door,’ appears rather to have had a hori¬ 
zontal entrance.^ 

Among many slighter indications that Mary and Martha 
were not among the poor of their people, this, that they 
should possess such a family vault, is one. The possession 
of such, in the very nature of things, must have been a 
privilege of the wealthier orders; only such would be thus 
laid in the sepulchres of their fathers.^ We have another 
indication of the same in the large concourse of mourners, 
and those certainly not of the meaner sort, who assembled 
from Jerusalem to console the sisters in their bereavement; 
for even in grief it is too often true, that ^ wealth maketh * 
many friends ; but the poor is separated from his neigh¬ 
bour ’ (Prov. xix. 4). The pound of ointment of spikenard, 

^ very costly,^ with which Mary anointed the Saviour’s feet 
(John xii. 3), points the same way. She who was ‘ troubled 
about many things ’ (Luke x. 41) was probably the mistress 
of a numerous household about which to be troubled; 
and the language of the original at ver. 19, however it 
may mean Martha and Mary, and not those around them, 
yet means them as the centre of an assemhlage. Chrysostom 
assumes the sisters to have been highborn,^ as generally 
do the early interpreters. They lay, however, a mistaken 
emphasis upon ‘ the town of Mary and her sister Martha ^ 

^ See Winer, Reolwd'rtet'huch, s. v. Graber; Diet, of the Bible, art. 
Burial. 

* Becker (Charioles, vol. ii. p. 190) observes the same of tbe fivii- 
nara among the Greeks. For the poorer classes there were burial-places 
in common, as with the Romans also (see his Gallus, vol. ii. p. 293 ; and 
the Diet, of Gr. and Rom. Antt. s. v. Funus, p. 436). 


THE BAISING OF LAZARUS. 


i3S 

(ver. i), wlio conclade from tliese words that Bethany 
belonged to them. The Levitical law rendered, and was 
intended to render, any such accumulation of landed pro¬ 
perty in the hands of one or two persons impossible; not 
to say that, by as good a right, Bethsaida might he 
concluded to have belonged to Andrew and Peter, for the 
language is exactly similar (John i. 45). 

^ Jesus said, Talce ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of 
him that was dead, saith unto Him, Lord, hy this time he 
stinheth ; for he hath been dead four days.’ Why does St. 
John designate Martha as ‘ the sister of him that was dead,’ 
when this was abundantly plain before ? Probably to 
account for her remonstrance. The sister of the dead, she 
would naturally be more shoclred than another at the 
thought of the exposure of that countenance, upon which 
corruption had already set its seal; she would most shud- 
deringly contemplate that beloved form made a spectacle 
to strangers, now when it was become an abhorring even 
to them that had loved it best.^ Yet the words of her 
remonstrance must not be understood as an experience 
which she now makes, but rather as a conclusion which 
she draws from the length of time during which the body 
had already lain in the grave. With the rapid decomposition 
that goes forward in a hot country, necessitating as it does 
an almost immediate burial, the ‘four days’ might well 
have brought this about. At the same time, it gives to 
this miracle almost a monstrous character, if we suppose it 
was actually the reanimating of a body which had already 
undergone the process of corruption. Eather He who sees 
the end from the beginning, and who had intended that 
Lazarus should live again, had watched over that body in 
his providence, that it should not hasten to corruption. 
If the poet could imagine a divine power guarding from 

^ Godet brings this out well—but also makes another point: C’est 
done ici une exclamation dietde par un sentiment de respect pour celui a 
qui elle parle: Seigneur, et par une sorte de pudeur pour la nersonne, 
•acree pour elle, de celui dont il s’agit. 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 


439 


all defeature and wrong the body which was thus preserved 
only for an honourable burial; ^ by how much more may 
we assume a like preservation for that body which, not in 
the world of fiction, but of realit}^, was to become again so 
soon the tabernacle for the soul of one of Christ’s servants. 
Ko conclusion of an opposite kind can be drawn from 
Martha’s words, spoken, as they plainly are, hefore the 
stone has been removed.^ 

This much, however, her words do reveal—that her 
faith in Christ, as able even then to quicken her dead 
brother, had already failed. There is nothing strange in 
this. Faith, such as hers, would inevitably have these 
alternating ebbs and flows ; from which a much stronger 
faith would scarcely be exempt. All which she concludes 
from this command to remove the stone is a desire on the 
Lord’s part to look once more on the countenance of his 
friend; from this purpose she would fain recall Him, by 
urging how death and corruption must have been busy in 
that tomb where her brother had already slept his four 
days’ sleep. The Lord checks and rebukes her unbelief: 
‘ Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou 

^ Homer, II. xxiv. 18-21. 

* It is sing-ular kow generally tins ///k/ is taken in proof of that, 
whereof it is only a conjecture, and, I am persuaded, an erroneous onej 
the TfTapTo'iog yap tart, which follows, being decisive that Martha only 
guesses from the common order of things that corruption will have be¬ 
gun. Yet Augustine (/n Ev. Joh. tract, xlix.) : Resuscitavit putentera. 
Tertulliau {Be Resur. Cam. 53) speaks of the soul of Lazarus, quara 
nemo jam foetere senserat. Hilary {Be Trin. vi. § 33): Foetens Lazarus. 
Ambrose says of the bystanders {Be Fide Resurr. ii. 80): Fcetorem 
Bentiunt. Bernard (/« Assiem. ASenn. iv.) : Foetere jam coeperat. Sedu- 
lius: Corruptum tabo exhalabat odorem. Compare Prudentius (Apo¬ 
theosis, 759-766); Chrysostom {Horn. lii. in Joh.')’, and Calvin: Alios 
Christus suscitavit, sed nunc in putrido cadavere potentiam suam exserit. 
In the Letter of Pontius Pilate to the Emperor Tiberius (Thilo, Codex 
Apocryphus, p. 807) this circumstance, as enhancing the wonder of the 
miracle, is urged with characteristic exaggerations: N£)c,ooj/ nva Aa^apov 
rtrpahptpov iic vtKpujp dAarrjfff, die(pOapiisvov r/Sr] t^ovra to aCopa vTtb Tutv 
i\Koyivr]'eoiv oKuXrjKwv, Kal to dveCjdtg tKiivo awpa to gfiptvov tv Ttp ra^ip 
tKfXtvee Traorou wpcbiog, ovrog tK Toi) Tafpov i^rjXOev^ 

dvojding TiXiierriQ TTtnXripuipkpcQ, 


HO THE BAISING OF LAZARUS, 

sha uldest see the glory of God ? ’ Here, as ever, faith is set 
forth as the condition under which alone his miracnlons 
power can be exerted. But when had He said this? 
Was it in that conversation which He held with her when 
first they met ? or in some prior conversation, which St. 
John has not recorded ? Hot, I should say, either in this 
or in that; but these very words occur in the message 
which the Lord sends back to the sorrowing sisters when 
He first learns the sickness of his friend (ver. 4), the 
message itself furnishing the key to the whole subsequent 
narrative. To those words, so spoken, he refers. 

And now Martha acquiesces: she does believe, and no 
longer opposes the hindrance of her unbelief to the work 
which the Lord would accomplish. ‘ Then/ those nearest 
of kin thus consenting, ‘ they tooh away the stone from the 
place where the dead was laid. And Jesns lifted up his eyes, 
and said, Father, I thanh Thee that Thou hast heard Me.’ 
The thanks to the Father are an acknowledgment that the 
power which He is about to display is from the Father 
(John V. 19, 20). But any such thanksgiving might easily 
have been misinterpreted by the disciples then, and by the 
Church afterwards; as though it would have been possible 
for the Father not to have heard Him,—as though He had 
first obtained this power to call Lazarus from his grave, 
after supplication,—had, like Elisha (2 Kin. iv. 33-35), by 
dint of prayer (cf. Acts ix. 40) painfully won back the life 
which had departed; whereas the power was most truly 
his own, not indeed in disconnexion from the Father, for 
what He saw the Father do, that also He did (John v. 19, 
21); but in this, his oneness with the Father, lay for Him 
the power of doing these mighty acts.^ Therefore He 
explains, evidently not any more in a voice audible by all 
those present, but so that his disciples might hear Him, what 

^ Chrysostom (Ham. Ixiv. in Joh.) enters at large upon this point. 
Maldonatus observes: Nihil enim aliud his verbis quam essentise volun- 
tatisque unitatem significari. Cf. Ambrose, He Fide, iii. 4. 


TIM RAISING OF LAZARUS. 


441 


tills ‘ Father, I thank Thee,'* meant, and wliy it was spoken i 
‘ And I knew that Thou hearest Me always: hut because of 
the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that 
Thou hast sent Me* (cf. i Kin. xviii. 36, 37). Tor them it 
wa.s wholesome: they should thus understand that He 
claimed his power from above, and not from beneath; that 
there was no magic, no necromancy here. 

Chrysostom supposes that when this thanksgiving prayer 
was uttered, Lazarus was already reanimated; but this is 
assuredly a mistake. The Son renders by anticipation 
thanks to the Tather, so confident is He that He too 
wields the keys of death and of the grave, and that these 
will give up their prey at his bidding, that He too can 
quicken whom He will (John v. 21). ‘And when He had 
thus spoken. He cried ^ with a loud voice, Lazarus, come 
forth* (Mark v. 41; Luke vii. 14; viii. 54; Acts ix. 40). 
To this ‘ cry with a loud voice,* ^ calling the things which 
are not as though they were (Ezek. xxxvii. 4), and heard 
through aU the chambers of death, the quickening power 
is everywhere in Scripture ascribed. Thus at John v. 28, 
29 : ‘ The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the 
graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; ’ and 
again at i Thess. iv. 16, it is at the descent of the Lord 
‘ with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel,’—which 
voice is his own, for Scripture knows of no other Archangel, 
—that the dead in Him will rise; while ‘ the last trump ’ 
(i Cor. 15-52) is probably this same voice of God, sounding 
through all the kingdom of death. 

‘And he that was dead cameforth,^ bound hand and foot 
with grave-clothes,^ and his face was bound about with a 

1 This KpavyaZfiv, which is stronger than Kpal^tiv (John Tii. 28 ; xii. 44), 
is nowhere else attributed to the Lord: but see Heb. v. 7 j cf. Matt. xii. 

19 : ovci Kpauyaaeu 

* Cyril calls it OtoTTpeTreg Kai ^aaCKiKov KsXfvffpa. Bernard: Abyssus 
abyssura vocat. Abyssus luminis et misericordise abyssum mortis et 
tenebrarum. 

s Hilary (Le Trin. vi. § 33) : Nullo intervallo vocis et vitae. 

■4 Kiip'iai—rd <r\nii>ia rd ei’Ta<pia=6d6via (Johnxix. 4o) = vincula linea 
(Tertullian). 


4^2 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 


napkin.^ Some, in their zeal for multiplying miracles, 
make it a new miracle, a wonder within a wonder,* as St. 
Basil calls it, that Lazarus so bound was able to obey the 
summons. But in that case to what end the further word, 

^ Loose Mm, and let Mm go ’Probably he was loosely 
involved in these grave-clothes, which hindering all free 
action, yet did not hinder motion altogether; or possibly, 
in accordance with the Egyptian fashion, every limb was 
wrapped round with these stripes by itself, just as in the 
mummies each separate finger has sometimes its own 
wrapping. 

The Gospel narrative is, if one may so speak, always 
epic, never idyllic; St. John therefore leaves us to imagine 
their joy, who thus beyond all expectation received back 
their dead from the grave; a joy which so few have shared 
among all the mourners of all times, 

* Who to the verge have followed that they love, 

And on the insuperable threshold stand; 

With cherished names its speechless calm reprove, 

And stretch in the abyss their ungrasped hand/ 

Not attempting to picture this, he proceeds to trace the 
historic significance of the miracle, the permitted link 
which it formed in that chain of events, which should 

^ Qavfxa tv Bavfia-i : cf. Ambrose, Le Fid, Res. ii. 78 ; and so Augustine 
(Enarr. in Rs. ci. 21): Proeessit ille vmctus: non ergo pedibus propriis, 
sed virtute producentis. 

2 Of Lazarus himself we have but one further notice (John xii. 2), but 
that, like the command to give meat to the revived maiden (Mark v. 43;, 
like the Lord’s own participation of food after the resurrection (Luke 
xxiv. 42; John xxi. 13), a witness against anything merely phantastic in 
his rising again. He is generally assumed to have been much younger 
than his sisters; one tradition mentioned by Epiphanius makes him thirty 
years old at this time, and to have survived for thirty years more. The 
traditions of his later life, as that he became bishop of Marseilles, rest 
upon no good authority: yet there is one circumstance of these traditions 
worthy of record, although not for its historic worth,—that the first 
question he asked the Lord after he was come back from the grave, was 
whether he should have to die again; and, learning that it must needs 
be so, that he never smiled any more. Lazarus, as a revena7it, is often 
used by the religious romance-writers of the Middle Ages as a vehicle foi 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 


443 


issue, according to tlie determinate decree and counsel of 
God, in the atoning death of the Son of God upon the 
cross. ‘ Then many of the Jews ivhich came to Mary, and 
had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on Him; hut 
some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them 
what things Jesus had donel Origen supposes that these 
last went with a good intention, as having that now to 
tell which even the Pharisees themselves could no longer 
resist, which must win them also to the acknowledgment 
that this was the Christ. Yet the manner in which this 
notice is introduced fails to support this more charitable 
construction of their purpose. St. John does here what 
he does evermore, divides the light from the darkness, the 
belief from the unbelief, and marks the progressive growth 
of the one and of the other. It is interesting to note 
how frequently he does the same elsewhere ; thus compare 
vi. 66-69 5 1 ^ 5 4^“43 5 47“52 ; ix. 16 ; x. 19-21. 

These who went and told the Pharisees were spectators of 
the miracle who on one plea or another refused to be con¬ 
vinced by it (Luke xvi. 31), and who, reporting to the 
professed enemies of the Lord this latest and most im¬ 
posing work of his, would irritate them yet more against 
Him,^ would make them feel the instant need of effectually 
counterworking, if possible putting out of the way, one 
who had done, or seemed to do, so notable a work; 
St. John, it will be observed, joins immediately with this 
report to the Pharisees a new and increased activity in 
their hostile machinations against the Lord. 

They are indeed now seriously alarmed. They anti¬ 
cipate the effects which this mighty work will have 

their conceptions of the other world. He is made to relate what he has 
seen and known, just as the Pamphylian that revived is used by Plato in 
the Republic for the same purposes (Wright, Sf. Patrick's Purgatory^ 
pp. 167-169). There is a very interesting and a singularly ingenious 
article upon Lazarus in the Lict of the Bible, identifying him with the 
young man that had great possessions, and on a former occasion went 
away from the Lord sorrowful (Matt. xix. 22). 

^ Euthymius: 0/;;^ tjg Povgd^oi rsc, dWd dinf^dWovreg wg yorira. 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 


H4 

upon tne people—their anticipations, as we learn pre¬ 
sently, were correct—(John xii. lo, ii, 17-19) 5 they 
gather in council together against the Lord and against 
his Anointed. They do not pause to inquire whether 
^ this man,^ as they contemptuously call Him,—who, even 
according to their own confession, ^ doeth many miracles ’ 
(cf. Acts iv. 16), may not be doing them in the power of 
God, may not be indeed the promised King of Israel. 
The question of the truth or falsehood of his claims seems 
never to enter into them minds, but only the bearing 
which the acknowledgment of these claims will have on 
the worldly fortunes of their order. This they contemplate 
under somewhat a novel aspect: ^ If we let Him thus alone, 
all men will believe on Him; and the Romans shall come, and 
take away both our place and nationi The direct con¬ 
nexion which they traced between the recognition of Jesus 
as the Christ, and a conflict with the Roman power, was 
probably this. The people will acknowledge Him for the 
Messiah; He will set Himself at their head, or they by 
compulsion will make Him their king (John vi. 15); here¬ 
upon will follow an attempt to throw off the foreign 
yoke, an attempt to be crushed presently by the superior 
power of Rome; which 'urill then use the opportunity 
that it has been waiting for long, and will make a 
general sweep, taking away from us wholly whatsoever 
survives of our power and independence, ^ our place ^ and 
naiioni Or, without anticipating an actual insurrection, 
they may have assumed that the mere fact of acknow¬ 
ledging a Messiah would arouse the jealousy of Rome, 

^ Tov TOTTov. Many, as Chrysostom, Theophylact, and others, under¬ 
stand hy this their city. But the Jews had much more probably the tem¬ 
ple in their thoughts. This, in which all their hopes centred, which to 
them was the middle point of all, would naturally be uppermost in their 
minds, while to the city we nowhere find the same exaggerated import¬ 
ance ascribed 5 see in confirmation 2 Macc. iii, 18; v. 19: Ps. Ixxviii. 
7; Ixxxiii. 4, LXX; Isai. Ixiv. 10. This for Origen is so far beyond 
ftll question, that, as it seems miconsciously, for to-kov he substitutes 

ayta(T//tir, 


THE EAISING OF LAZARUS, 


445 


would be accounted an act of rebellion, to be *visited witb 
these extremest penalties.* How sensitive that jealousy 
was, how easily alarmed, we have a thousand proofs. 

^ Art Thou the King of the Jews ? ’ (John xviii. 33 ; cf. 
Acts xvi. 21; xvii. 7, 8) is the point to which the Eoman 
governor comes at once. Augustine stands alone in a 
somewhat different interpretation—namely, that the Jews 
were already meditating, as no doubt they always were, 
the great revolt of a later time, and discerned plainly that 
the nerves of it would be effectually cut by the spread of 
the doctrines of this Prince of peace. Where should they 
find instruments for their purpose, if many of the fierce 
‘zealots’ (see Acts i. 13) were transformed into meek 
Apostles ? All resistance to the Eoman domination would 
become impossible; and these, whensoever they chose, 
would come and rob them of whatever remained of their 
national existence.^ We shall do best, however, in ad¬ 
hering to the more usual interpretation. The question 
will still remain. Did they who urged this, indeed feel the 
dread which they professed ? or did they only pretend to 
fear these consequences from the ministry of Christ, if 
suffered to remain uninterrupted; and that, on accouut of 
a party in the Sanhedrim (see John ix. 16), who could 
only be thus won over to the extreme measures now 
meditated against Him ? The Greek expositors in general 
suppose that they did but feign this alarm ; I must needs 
believe that herein they were sincere; however, besides 
this alarm, there may have been deeper and more malignant 
motives at work in their minds. 

Probably many half-measures had been proposed by one 

1 Corn, a Lapide: Si omnes credant Jesum esse Messiam, regem Judseo- 
rum, irritabuntur contra nos Romani Judseae domini, quod nobis novum 
regem et Messiam, puta Jesum, creaverimus, ac a Caesare Tiberio ad eum 
defecerimus; quare armati venient et vastabunt et perdent Hierosoljmam 
et Judaeam, cum tota Judaeorum gente et republica. 

* In Ev. Joh. tract, xlix.: Hoc autem timuerunt, ne si omnes in 
Cbiistum crederent, nemo remaneret, qui adversus Romanos civitatem 
Dei templumque defenderet. 


THE RAISING OF LAZASUS. 


446 

member and another of the Sanhedrim for arresting the 
growing inclination of the people to recognize Jesns as 
the Christ, and had been debated backward and forward; 
such as hindering them from hearing Him; proclaiming 
anew, as had been done before, that any shonld be ex¬ 
communicated who should confess Him to be Christ 
(John ix. 22). But these measures had been already tried, 
and had proved insufiB.cient; and in that ‘ Ye Tcnow nothing 
at all ’ of Caiaphas, we have the voice of the bold bad man, 
silencing, with ill-suppressed contempt, his weak and 
vacillating colleagues, who could see the danger, while 
they yet shrunk, though not for the truth’s sake, from 
the one step which promised to remove it. ‘ JYor consider 
that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the 
people, and that the whole nation perish not’ Guilty or 
not guilty, this man, who threatens to imperil the whole 
nation, and, whether He Himself means it or no, to com¬ 
promise it with the Eoman power, must be taken out of 
the way. 

Caiaphas,^ who dares thus to come to the point, and to 
speak the unuttered thought of many in that assembly, 
was a Sadducee (Acts v. 17). Hengstenberg thinks we may 
trace in this utterance of his the roughness ® which Jo¬ 
sephus ascribes to the Sadducees as compared with the 
Pharisees. St. John describes him as ‘ leing the High Priest 
that same year,’ and repeats the same phrase ver. 51, 
and again xviii. 13 ; from which some have concluded that 
whoever wrote this Gospel accounted the High Priesthood a 
yearly office; and have then deduced the further conclusion, 
that since it was impossible for St. John to have fallen into 
this mistake, it was therefore impossible that he could be 
the author of this Gospel. Certainly, any one who asserted 

^ His proper name was Josepk. That other name hy which he is better 
known he probably assumed with his assumption of the High Priesthood 
(Josephus, Antt. xviii. 2. 2; xviii. 4. 2). The High Priests were wont, 
on their election, to change their name, as the Popes do now. 

* ’AjpiojTfpo)’, B. J, ii. 8. 14. 


the haisino of lazarus. 


447 


tliis would therein display an ignorance with which it 
would be absurd to credit the Apostle. It is quite true 
that the High Priesthood at this time was by the Pomans 
as vilely prostituted as, under very similar circumstances, 
the Patriarch’s throne at Constantinople is now by the 
Turks. It was their policy that this, the middle point of 
Jewish national life, should be weakened and discredited 
as much as possible. The office was by them shifted from 
one to another so rapidly, as sometimes to remain with 
the same holder even for less than a year; but it was 
still, according to its institution, a lifelong office, was 
retained by many, if not for a lifetime, yet for many years; 
as by Caiaphas himself, who held it for more than ten 
years. ^ But they must be hardly set to find arguments 
against the authenticity of St. John’s Gospel, who have 
recourse to this. If some historian Avere to write that 
Abraham Lincoln was President of the United States 
that same year in Avhich the great civil war broke out, 
would any be justified in imputing to him the mistake that 
the Presidency was a yearly office, or in arguing that the 
writer could not have been an American living at the 
time, and to whom the ordinary sources of information 
were open ? And who has a right to ascribe to the words 
of St. John any further meaning than that Caiaphas was 
High Priest then^ whether he had been so before, or 
should be after, was nothing to his present purpose. It is 
significant to the Evangelist that he was this when he 
spake these words, these obtaining thus a weight and 
importance which else they would not , have •possessed.^ 
They were not the words of Caiaphas ; they were the words 
of the High Priest: ^ « This sjpake he not of himself; hut 
being High Priest that year, he jproj>hesied that Jesus should 

1 He was the fifth High Priest whom Valerius Gratus during a procu- 
ratorship of not more than eleven years, had appointed. Four others 
had in rapid succession been deposed by him (Josephus, Antt. xviii. 2. 
Eusebius, H. E. i. 10). 

* Bengel; Ubique occurrit Johannes interpretationi sinistra). 


h8 


THE RAISINO OF LAZARUS. 


die for that nation,^ This oracular, even prophetic, charac¬ 
ter which the words thus obtained requires some explana¬ 
tion. That a bad man should utter words which were so 
overruled bj God as to become prophetic, would of itself 
be no difiicultj. He who used a Balaam to declare that a 
Star should come out of Jacob and a Sceptre rise out of 
Israel (Hum. xxiv. 17), might have used Caiaphas to fore- 
announce other truths of his kingdom.^ Hor is there any 
difficulty in such unconscious prophecies as this evidently 
is.^ How many prophecies of a like kind,—most of them, 
it is true, rather in act than in word,—meet us in the 
whole history of the crucifixion ! What was the title over 
our blessed Lord, ^ Jesus of Hazareth, the King of the 
Jews,’ but another such scornful and contemptuous, yet 
most veritable, prophecy ? Or what, again, the purple robe 
and the homage, the sceptre and the crown 9 The Roman 
soldiers did not mean to fulfil the 22 nd Psalm when they 
parted Christ’s garments among them, and cast lots 
upon his vesture; nor the Jewish mockers, the Chief 
Priests and Scribes, when they wagged their heads and 
spoke those taunting words against Him; but they did so 
not the less. And in the typical rehearsals of the crowning 
catastrophe in the drama of God’s providence, how many 
a Him rod and Pharaoh and Antiochus, Antichrists that do 
not quite come to the birth, have prophetic parts allotted 
to them, which they play out, unknowing what they do 5 


^ Augustine, adducing this prophecy, exclaims {Serm. cccxv. i): 
Magna yis ei^t veritatis. Oderunt veritatem homines, et veritatem pro- 
phetant nescientes. Non agunt, sed agitur de illis. Calvin : Puit ero-o 
tunc quasi hilinguis Caiaphas. Impium enim et crudele negandi Chri¬ 
stum consilium, quod in animo conceptum hahuit, evomuit; Deus vero 
linguam ejus alio flexit, ut suh amhigiiis Verbis vaticinium simul proferret. 
Voluit autem Deus ex sede pontificia manare divinum oraculum. 

^ It exactly answers as such to the omina of Roman superstition, in 
which words spoken by one person in a lower meaning are taken up by 
another in a higher, and by him claimed to be prophetic of that. Cicero 
{De Divin. i. 46) gives examples 5 these, too, resting on the faith that 
men’s words are ruled by a higher power than their own. 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS, 449 

for sucli is the divine ironj; so, in a very deep sense of 
fclie words, 

Ludit in humanis divina potentia relbiis.^ 

But tlie perplexing circumstance is tlie attributing to 
Caiaplias, because be was High Priest, these prophetic 
words—for prophetic the Evangelist plainly pronounces 
them to be, and all attempts to rid his words of this inten¬ 
tion, and to destroy the antithesis between ^ sjpealting of 
himself^ and ‘prophesying^ are idle.^ There is no need^ 
however, to suppose (and this greatly diminishes the 
embarrassment) that he meant to affirm this to have been 
a power inherent in the High Priesthood ; that the High 
Priest, as such, must prophesy; but only that God, the 
extorter of those unwilling, or even unconscious, prophecies 
from wicked men, ordained this further, that he in whom 
the whole theocracy culminated, who was ‘ the Prince of 
the people’ (Acts xxiii. 5), for such, till another High 
Priest had sanctified Himself,—and his moral character 
was nothing to the point,—Caiaphas truly was,—should, 
because he bore this office, be the organ of this memorable 
prophecy concerning Christ, and the meaning and end of 
his death.^ 

1 We have an example of this in the very name Caiaphas, which is 
only another form of Cephas, being derived from the same Hebrew 
word. He was meant to he what Eusebius, with reference to the 
peace-making activity of Irenaeus {tlprjvaToO in the Church, calls him, 
(tepiovvpog. He should have been ‘ the Eock; ’ here too, as in names like 
Stephen’s (<jTUavog, the first winner of the martyr’s croivn), the nomen 
et omm was to have held good. And such, had he been true to his posi¬ 
tion, had the Jewish economy past easily and without a struggle into 
that for which it was the preparation, he would naturally have been; the 
first in the one would have been first in the other. But as it was, he bore 
this name but in mockery; he was the rock indeed, but the rock on which, 
not the Church of Christ, but the synagogue of Satan, was built.—In the 
Syrian Church there are curious legends of the after life of Caiaphas, and 
his conversion to the faith (Thilo, Cod. Apocryplms, p. xxix.). 

2 Wolf {Curee, in loc.) gives some of these. 

3 Vitringa {Ohss. Sac. vi. ii) : Visus est Caiaphas Joannifatidicum et 

ominosum c[uid proferre, Et vere sententia ejus hujusmodi est, ut altio- 
rem aliq^uem sensum condat.Suppouit igitur Apostolus non fuisso 



the raising of LAZARUS. 

Wliat follows, ‘And not for that nation^ only, hut that 
also He should gather together in one the children of God 
that were scattered abroad,’ is not a meaning legitimately 
involved in tlie words of Caiaplias, but is added by St. 
Jobn, careful to binder that limitation of the benefits of 
Christ’s death, which otherwise they might seem to involve. 
So grave a misinterpretation, now that the words had been 
adopted as more than man’s, it was well worth while to 
avert. Caiaphas indeed prophesied that Jesus should die 
for that nation, and (St. John himself adds) He indeed died 
not for that nation only, but also for the gathering in 
one of all the children of God scattered abroad through 
the whole world (cf. Isai. xlix. 6; Ivi. 6-8). Elsewhere he 
has declared the same truth : ‘ He is the propitiation for 
our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of 
the whole world ’ (i John ii. 2 ). Hot the law, as the Jews 
supposed, but the atoning death of Christ, should bind 
together all men into one fellowship : ^ I, if I be lifted up 
from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.’ The law was 
no bond of union, rather a wall of separation. It was only 
that death, and the life which sprung out of that death, 

alieniim aPontifice Heljraeoriim illo tempore TrpofprjrevHv^ oracula fundere, 
et nesciuni etiam mandata Niiminis profari. A Pontifice, inqiiam, hoc 
solum respectu DeO commendahili, quod Pontifex esset; cum ceteroquin 
personae ejus nulla essent merita, quae facere poterant, ut Deus illius 
rationem haberet. Sed cum Deus Pontifices constituisset in ilia gente, 
publicos suae legis voluntatisque interpretes, etiamsi eos in universum 
propterea neutiquam exemisset omni errore judicii in re religionis; 
placuit illi Caiaphae Pontificis potius quam ullius alterius Assessoria 
linguam in dicenda sententia ita moderari, ut, praeter animi sui consilium, 
de necessitate et vero fine mortis Christi sapienter loqueretur, veramque 
ederet confessionem, ac si non tanquam Caiaphas sententiam pronun- 
ciasset.—On the special illumination vouchsafed to the High Priest as 
bearer of the ephod, see Bahr, Symbolik, yoI. ii. p. 136. 

^ Very remarkable in St. John’s taking up of the words of Caiaphas is 
the substitution upon his part of aQroc for the Xacg which the other had 
used. The Jews were still the \a6c in the eyes of the High Priest; not 
so in those of St. John. This title had been forfeited by them. There 
was another Xaog now, even that which had once been ov Xaog (i Pet. ii. 
10; Pev. xriii. 4.; xxi. 3); and were henceforth but an iOvog, as 
the other Wurj of the world. 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 


451 


wliicL. could knit together. We have at Ephes. ii. 13-22, 
St. Paul’s commentary on these words of St. John. ^ The 
children of God ^ have this name by anticipation here; they 
are those predestinated to this; who, not being disobedient 
to the heavenly calling, should hereafter become his children 
by adoption and grace.^ So too, in a parallel passage, 
Christ says, ^ Other sheep I have, which are not of this 
fold’ {John X. 16), others, that is, which should be here¬ 
after his sheep ; He has ^ much people ’ in Corinth (Acts 
xviii. 10), many, that is, who shall be hereafter obedient 
to the faith. In a subordinate sense they might be 
termed ^ children of God ’ already; they were the nobler 
natures, although now run wild, among the heathen, the 
^ sons of peace,’ that should receive the message of peace 
(Luke X. 6); in a sense, ^ of the truth,’ even while 
they were sharing much of the falsehood round them 5 so 
far ‘ of the truth,’ that, when the King of truth came and 
lifted up his banner in the world, they gladly ranged 
themselves under it (John xviii. 37; cf. Luke viii. 15; 
John iii. 19-21). 

Li pursuance of this advice of Caiaphas it came now to a 
solemn resolution on the part of the Sanhedrim, that Jesus 
should die. ‘ Then from that day forth they tooh counsel 
together for to ^ut Him to deathi There had been purposes 
and schemes among Hhe Jews,’ that is, the Pharisees and 
their adherents, to put Him to death before (Matt. xii. 14; 
John V. 16. 18; vii. i, 19, 25 ; viii. 37) ; but it was now 
the formal resolution of the chief Council of the nation.^ 
All that now remained was to devise the fittest means for 
bringing this about. ^ Jesus, therefore, walked no more 
openly among the Jews (cf. Deut. xxxii. 20), hut went thence 
unto a counting near to the wilderness,^ the wilderness, that 
is, which is mentioned Josh. viii. 15, 24; xvi. i ; xviii. 12; 

^ Augustine, Ep. clxxxvii. 12. 

Cornelius a Lapide: Vita Lazari, mors Cliristi. 


20 


452 


THE EAISING OF LAZAPMS. 


'—^ into a city called Ephraim,^ and there continued with his 
disciples’ —-not indeed for long, for ‘ the Jews’ Passover was 
nigh at hand’ and He, the yerj Paschal Lamh of that 
Passover, must not be wanting at the feast. 

In the ancient Church there was ever found, besides the 
literal, an allegorical interpretation of this and the two 
other miracles of the like kind. As Christ raises those 
that are naturally dead, so also He quickens them that are 
spiritually dead; and the history of this miracle, as it 
abounds the most in details, so was it the most fruitful field 
on which the allegorists exercised their skill. Here they 
found the whole process of the sinner’s restoration from the 
death of sin to a perfect spiritual life shadowed forth; and 
these allegories are often rich in manifold adaptations of 
the history, as beautiful as they are ingenious, to that 
which it is made to declare.^ Hor was this all; for these 
three raisings from the dead were often contemplated not 
apart, not as each portraying exactly the same truth ; but 
in their connexion with one another, as setting forth one 
and the same truth under different and successive aspects. 
It was observed how we have the record of three persons 
that were restored to life,—one, the daughter of Jairus, 
being raised/rom the led-, another, the son of the widow, 
from the Her ; and lastly, Lazarus from the grave. And in 
the same way Christ raises to newness of life sinners of all 
degrees; not only those who have just fallen away from 
truth and holiness, like the maiden who had just expired, 
and in whom, as with a taper newly extinguished, it was 
by comparison easy to kindle a vital flame anew; but He 
raises also them who, like the young man borne out to his 

^ This Ephraim is considered identical with that mentioned at 
2 Chron. xiii. 19 ; see hitter’s Palestine, Engl. Transl. vol. iv. p. 225 ; and 
Robinson’s Biblical Researches, vol. i. p. 444. It is called in Josephus 
a TToXixvLnv {B. J. iv. 9. 9). 

* See, for instance, Augustine, QucBst. Ixxxiii. qu. 65; Bernard, Dt, 
Assam. Scrm. iv. 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 


453 


burial, have been some little while dead in their trespasses. 
Nor has He even yet exhausted his power; for He quickens 
them also who, like Lazarus, have lain long festering in 
their sins, as in the corruption of the grave, who were not 
merely dead, but buried,—with the stone of evil customs 
and evil habits laid to the entrance of their tomb, and 
seeming to forbid all egress thence.* Even this stone He 
rolls away, and bids them to come forth, loosing the hands 
of their sins® so that presently they are sitting down with 
the Lord at that table, there where there is not the foul 
odour of the grave, but where the whole house is full of the 
sweet fragrance of the ointment of Christ (John xii. 1-3). 
All this Donne has well expressed; ^ If I be dead within 
doors (If I have sinned in my heart), why suscitavit in 
domo, Christ gave a resurrection to the ruler’s daughter 
within doors, in the house. If I be dead in the gate (If I 
have sinned in the gates of my soul), in my eyes, or ears, 
or hands, in actual sins, why suscitavit in jportd, Christ gave 
a resurrection to the young man at the gate of Nain, If I 
be dead in the grave (in customary and habitual sins), -svhy 

1 Gregory tlie Great {Moral, xxii. 15): Veni foras; ut nimirum homo 
in peccato suo mortuus, et per molem malae consuetudinis jam sepultus, 
quia intra conscientiam suam ahsconsus jacet per nequitiam, a semetipso 
foras exeat per confessionem. Mortuo enim, Veni foras, dicitur, ut ab 
excusatione atque occultatione peccati ad accusationem suam ore proprio 
exire provocetur (2 Sam. xii. 13). Thus too Hildehert, in his sublime 
hymn, He SS. T'initate (see my Sacred Latin Poetry ): 

Extra portam jam delatum, Jube, lapis revolvetur. 


Jube, vitta dirumpetur. 
Exiturus nescit moras, 
Postquam clamas, Exi foras. 


Jam foetentem, tumulatuin, 
Vitta ligat, lapis urget; 

Sed si jubes, hie resurget. 


A fine sermon or homily in Massillon’s Careme is just the unfolding of 
these lines. 

2 The stone, for Augustine, is the law {In Ev. Joh. tract, xlix.) : Quid 
est ergo, Lapidem removete ? Littera occidens, quasi lapis est premens. 
Removete, inquit, lapidem. Removete legis pondus, gratiam predicate. 
‘Loose hi?)!, and let him go,' he refers to release from Church censures; it 
was Christ’s word which quickened the dead, who yet used the mini¬ 
stration of men to restore entire freedom of action to him whom He had 
quickened {E?iarr. in Ps. ci. 21 ; Serm. xcviii, 6): Hie suscitavit mpr? 
tuum, illi solverunt ligatum. 


454 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 


suscitavit in sejpulcro, Christ gave a resurrection to Lazarus 
in the grave too.’ ^ 

' The other raisings from the dead nowhere afford subjects to early 
Christian Art; but this often, and in all its stages. Sometimes Martha 
kneels at the feet of Jesus ; sometimes the Lord touches with his won¬ 
der-staff the head of Lazarus, who is placed upright (which is a mistake, 
and a transfer of Egyptian customs to Judaea), and rolled up as a mummy 
(which was nearly correct), in a niche of the grotto; sometimes he is 
coming forth at the word of the Lord (Miinter, Sinnbilder d, Alt. Christ. 
vol. ii..p. 98).—From a sermon of Asterius we learn that it was a custom 
in his time, and Chrysostom tells us it was the same among the wealthy 
Byzantines, to have this and other miracles of our Lord woven on their 
garments. ^ Here mayest thou see,’ says Asterius, ‘ the marriage in Ga¬ 
lilee and the waterpots, the impotent man that carried his bed on his 
shoulders, the blind man that was healed with clay, the woman that had 
an issue of blood and touched the hem of his garment, the awakened 
Lazarus; and with this they count themselves pious, and to wear gar¬ 
ments well-pleasing to God,’ 


%o THE OPENING OF THE EYES OF TWO BLIND 
MEN NEAR JERICHO. 

Matt. xx. 29-34; Mark x. 46-52; Ltjke xviii. 35-43* 



IHE adjusting of tlie several records of this miracle has 


J- put the ingenuity of harmonists to the stretch. St. 
Matthew commences his report of it as follows : ^ And as 
they departed from Jericho, a great multitude followed Him. 
And behold, two blind men, sitting by the wayside, when they 
heard that Jesus passed by, cried out, saying. Have mercy on 
us, 0 Lord, Thou Son of David’ Thus, according to him, 
the Lord is departing from Jericho, and the petitioners 
are two. St. Luke appears at first* sight to contradict 
both these statements ; for him the healed is but one ; and 
Christ effects his cure at his coming nigh to the city. 
St. Mark occupies a middle place, holding in part with 
one of his fellow Evangelists, in part with the other; with 
St. Luke in naming but one who was healed; with 
St. Matthew in placing the miracle, not at the entering 
into, but the going out from, Jericho; so that the three 
narratives in a way as perplexing as it is curious cross 
and interlace one another. To escape all such difficulties 
as the synoptic Gospels present us here, there is the ready 
suggestion always at hand, that the sacred historians are 
recording different events, and that therefore there is 
really no difficulty; and nothing to reconcile. But in fact 
we do not thus evade, we only exchange, our embarrassment. 
Accepting this solution, we must believe that in the 
immediate neighbourhood of Jericho, our Lord was thrice 
besought in almost the same words by blind beggars on 


if-56 THE OPENING OF THE EYES OF 


the wayside for mercy;—that on all three occasions there 
was a multitude accompanying Him, who sought to silence 
the voices of the claimants, but only caused them to cry 
the morethat in each case Jesus stood still and de¬ 
manded what they wanted;—that in each case they made 
the same reply in very nearly the same words;—and a 
great deal moreJ All this is so unnatural, so unlike 
anything in actual life, so unlike the infinite variety which 
the incidents of the Gospels present, that for myself I 
should prefer almost any explanation to this. 

The three apparently discordant accounts of this miracle, 
no one of them entirely agreeing with any other, can at 
once be reduced to two by that rule, which in all recon¬ 
ciliations of parallel histories must be applied, namely, 
that the silence of one narrator is in itself no contradiction 
of the statement of another; thus the second ^ and third 
Evangelist, making mention of one blind man, do not 
contradict St. Matthew, who mentions two. There remains 
only the circumstance that by one Evangelist the healing is 
placed at the Lord’s entering into the city, by the others 
at his going out. This is no sufficient ground to justify a 
duplication of the fact; and Bengel, as I must needs 
believe, with his usual happy tact, has selected the right 
reconciliation of the difficulty; ^ namely, that one cried to 

^ Some in old times and new Lave tLoiigLt tLemselves bound in to 
this conclusion:—thus Augustine (^De Cons. Evang. ii. 65) ; LigLtfoot 
{Harmony of the New Testament, sect. 69); and Greswell.' On the other 
hand, Theophylact, Chrysostom, Maldonatus, Grotius, have with more or 
less confidence maintained that we have here the same event. 

* Augustine {De Cons. Evang. ii. 65) ; Procul duhio itaque Bartimaeus 
iste Timcei filius ex aliqua magna felicitate dejectus, notissimae et famo- 
sissimse miseriae fuit, quod non solum caecus, verum etiam mendicus sede- 
bat. Hinc est ergo quod ipsum solum voluit commemorare Marcus, 
cujus illuminatio tarn claram famam huic miraculo comparavit, quam 
erat illius nota calamitas. Cf. Qucest. Evang. ii. 48. 

® Bengel: Marcus unum commemoratBartimaeum, insigniorem (x. 46), 
eundemque Lucas (xviii. 35) innuit, qui transponendae historiae occasio- 
nem exinde habuit, quod caecorum alter, Jesu Hierichuntem intrante, in 
via notitiam divini hujus medici acquisivit. Salvator dum apud Zac- 
chaeum pranderet, vel pernoctaret potius, Bartimaeo caecorum alter, queni 


TWO BLIND MEN NEAR JERICHO, 


457 


Him as He drew near to the city,' whom yet He cured not 
then, hut on the morrow at his going out of the city cured 
him together with the other, to whom in the mean while 
he had joined himself. St. Matthew will then relate by 
anticipation, as is not uncommon with all historians, the 
whole of the event where he first introduces it, rather 
than, by cutting it in two halves, and deferring the con¬ 
clusion, preserve a more painful accuracy, yet lose the 
effect which the complete history related at a breath would 
possess. 

In the cry with which these blind men sought to attract 
the notice and the pity of the Lord there lay on their part 
a recognition of his dignity as the Messiah; for this name, 

^ Eon of David,^ was the popular designation of the great 
expected Prophet (Matt. ix. 27; xxi. 9; xxii. 42; cf. 
Ezek. xxxiv. 23, 24). There was thus on their part a 
double confession of faith ; a confession first that He could 
heal them, and secondly, not merely as a prophet from 
God, but as the Prophet, as the one ^t whose coming the 
eyes of the blind should be opened, and the ears of the 
deaf unstopped (Isai. xxix. 18; xxxv. 5). In the case of 
the man blind from his birth (John ix.) we have the same 
confessions, but following, and not preceding, the cure, 
and with intervals between; so that first he acknowledges 
Him as a prophet (ver. 17), and only later as the Christ 
(ver. 38). Here the explanation has been sometimes found 
of what follows : ‘ The multitude rebuJced them, because they 
would not hold their jpeace ; ’ as though they grudged to 
hear given to Jesus titles of honour, which they were not 

Matthseus adjungit, interim associatus est. Maldonatus had already 
fallen upon the same reconciliation. 

1 Grotius will have it that St. Luke’s tv tyyi^eiv here need not, and 
does not, mean, When He was dt'awing near to, hut, When He was in the 
neighbourhood of, —and that this his nearness to the city was that of one 
who had just departed/rom, not of one who was now approaching to, it. 
But, granting that this were admitted, the notice of Zaccheus which fol¬ 
lows is irreconcileahle with the assumption that Christ was now quitting 
Jericho. 


458 THE OPENING OF THE EYES OF 

themselves prepared to accord Him.' We should then 
have here a parallel to Luke xix. 39 ; only that there the 
Pharisees would have Christ Himself to rebuke those that 
were glorifying Him, while here the multitude take the 
rebuking into their own hands. But while it was quite in 
the spirit of the envious malignant Pharisees to be vexed 
with those Messianic salutations : ‘ Blessed be the King, 
that cometh in the name of the Lord;' these well-meaning 
multitudes, rude and in the main spiritually undeveloped 
as no doubt they were, were yet exempt from such spiritual 
malignities. They for the most part sympathize with the 
Lord and his work (Matt. ix. 8). While others said that 
his miracles were wrought in the power of Beelzebub, 
they glorified God because of them. And here, too, I 
cannot doubt but that out of an intention of honouring 
Christ they sought to silence these suppliants. He may 
have been teaching as He went, and they would not have 
Him interrupted by ill-timed and unmannerly clamours. 

But the voices of these suppliants are not to be stifled 
so. On the contrary, ^ they cried the more, saying. Have 
mercy on us, 0 Lord, Thou Son of iJavid.^ Many admirable 
applications of this little feature in the narrative have 
been made. Is there not here, it has been often asked, 
the story of innumerable souls ? When any begins to be 
in earnest about his salvation, to cry that his eyes may be 
opened, that he may walk in his light who has the light of 
life, begins to despise the world and all those objects which 
other men most desire, he will, find a vast amount of 
opposition, and that not from professed enemies of the 
Gospel of Christ, but from such as seem, like this multi¬ 
tude, to be with Jesus and on his side. Even they will 
endeavour to stop his mouth, and to hinder any earnest 

^ Hilary: Denique eos turba objurgat, quia acerbe a ceecis audiimt 
quod negabant, Dominum esse David Filium. Compare a remarkable 
passage iu Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 36) on Christ’s allowance of the 
asciiption of this title to Him. 


TWO BLIND MEN NEAR JERICHO. 


459 


crying to the Lord.* And then, with a picture from the 
life, Augustine makes further application of what follows, 
when Jesus, arrested as ever by the crj of need, ^ stood 
still, and commanded him to he called.’ > For then, as we 
read, ‘ they called the blind man, saying u 7 ito him. Be of good- 
comfort, arises Se calleth thee.’ This too, he observes, 
repeats itself continually in the life of God’s saints. If a 
man will only despise and overbear these obstacles from a 
world which calls itself Christian ; if, despite of all opposers, 
he will go on, until Christ is evidently and plainly with 
him, then the very same who at the first checked and 
reprehended, will in the end applaud and admire; they 
who at first exclaimed, ‘ He is mad,’ will end with 

^ Augustine (Sei'm. cccxlix. 5) : Eeprehensuri sunt nos . . . quasi dilec- 
tores nostri, homines seculares, amantes terram, sapientes pulverem, 
nihil de cselo ducentes, auras liberas corde, nare carpentes: reprehensuri 
sunt nos procul dubio, atque dicturi, si viderint nos ista humana, ista ter- 
rena contemnere: Quid pateris ? quid insanis ? Tiirba ilia est contra- 
dicens, ne csecus clamet. Et aliquant! Christian! sunt, qui prohibent 
vivere Christiane, quia et ilia turba cum Christo ambulabat, et vocife- 
rantem hominem ad Christum ac lucem desiderantem, ab ipsius Christ! 
beneficio prohibebat. Sunt tales Christiani, sed vincamus illos, vivamus 
bene, et ipsa vita sit vox nostra ad Christum. Again, Serin. Ixxxviii. 
13, 14: Incipiat mundum contemnere, inopi sua distribuere, pro nihilo 
habere qu0e homines amant, contemnat injurias, ... si quis ei abstulerit 
sua, non repetat; si quid alieni abstulerit, reddat quadruplum. Cum 
ista facere coeperit, omnes sui cognati, affines, amici commoventur. Quid 
insanis ? Nimius es : numquid alii non sunt Christiani ? Ista stultitia 
est, ista dementia est. Et cetera tali a turba clamat, ne cseci clament. . . . 
Bonos Christianos, vere studiosos, volentes facere proecepta Dei, Christiani 
mali et tepidi prohibent. Turba ipsa quse cum Domino est prohibet 
clamantes, id est, prohibet bene operantes, ne perseverando sanentur. 
Gregory the Great gives it another turn {Horn. ii. in Evang.) : Ssepe 
namque dum convert! ad Dominum post perpetrata vitia volumus, dum 
contra hsec eadem exorare \itia quae perpetravimus, conamur, occurrunt 
cordi phantasmata peccatorum quae fecimus, mentis nostrae aciem rever¬ 
berant, confundunt animum, et vocem nostrae deprecationis premunt. 

Quae praeibant ergo, increpabant eum, ut taceret.In se, iit sus- 

picor, recognoscit unusquisqne quod dicimus: quia dum ab hoc mundo 
animum ad Deum mutamus, dum ad orationis opus convertimur, ipsa 
quae prius delectabiliter gessimus, importuna postea atque gravia in 
oratione nostri tokramus. Vix eorum cogitatio manu sancti desiderii 
ab oculis cordis abigitur; vix eorum phantasmata per poenitentiae laments 
Buperantur. 



4-60 THE OPENING OF THE EYES " 

exclaiming, ^ He is a saint.’ ^ It fared exactly tlius, for - 
example, with St. Francis of Assisi. 

‘ And he, casting away his garment,’ to the end that he 
might obey with the greater expedition,^ and without ^ 
incumbrance, ^ rose and came to Jesus.’ In this his ridding .. 
himself of all which would have hindered, he has been often 
held forth as an example for every soul which Jesus has 
called, that it should in like manner lay aside every weight, 
and every besetting sin (Matt. xiii. 44, 46; Phil. iii. 7). 
The Lord’s question, ^ What wilt thou that I should do unto 
thee ? ’ is, in part, an expression of his readiness to aid, a 
comment in act upon his own words, spoken but a little 
while before, ‘ The Son of man came not to be ministered 
unto, but to minister ’ (Matt. xx. 28); is in part intended 
to evoke into livelier exercise the faith and expectation of 
the petitioner (Matt. ix. 28). The man, whose cry has 
been hitherto a vague indeterminate cry for mercy, now 
singles out the blessing which he craves, designates the 
channel in which he desires that this mercy should run,^ 

1 Augustine {Serm. Ixxxviii. 17): Cum quisque Cliristianus coeperit 
bene vivere, fervere bonis operibus, mundumque contemn ere, in ipsa 
novitate operum suorum patitur reprehensores et contradictores frigidos 
Christianos. Si autem perseveraverit, et eos superaverit perdurando, et 
non defecerit a bonis operibus; iidem ipsi jam obsequentur, qui ante pro- 
bibebant. Tamdiu enim corripiunt et perturbant et vetant, quamdiii sibi 
cedi posse prsesumunt. Si autem victi fuerint perseverantia proficientium, 
convertunt se et dicere incipiunt, Magnus bomo, sanctus bomo, felix cui 
Deus concessit. Honorant, gratulantur, benedicunt, laudant; quomodo 
ilia turba quae cum Domino erat. Ipsa probibebat ne caeci clamarent; 
sed post quam illi ita clamaverunt, ut mererentur audiri, et impetrare 
misericordiam Domini, ipsa turba rursum dicit, Vocat vos Jesus. Jam et 
bortatores fiunt, qui paulo ante corripiebant ut tacerent. How exactly 
this was the story of St. Francis of Assisi. " j 

Thus 11 . ii. 185: B} If. OUiv, airb It x^alvav ( 3 a\f: and in Phcsdnis, 
v. fab. z: Stringitque gladium, dein rejectd penuld', cf. Suetonius, Au- \ 
giist. 26. ^ 

Gregory the Great (Horn. ii. in Evang.').^ commenting on this request 
of theirs, bids us, in like manner, to cmcentrate our petitions on the chief ^ 
thing of all: Non falsas divitias, non terrena dona, non fugitixos honores 
a Domino, sed lucem quaeramus; nec lucem quae loco clauditur, quae tern- 
pore finitur, qu« noctium interruptione variatur, quae a nobis communiter SB 
cum pecoribus cernilnr: sed lucem quaeramus, quam videre cum solis^B 
Angelis possimus, quam nec initiuin inchoat, nec finis angustat. 







TWO BLIND MEN NEAR JERICHO. 461 


‘ Lord, that I 'might receive my sighti Only St. Matthew 
mentions the touching of the eyes which were to be restored 
to vision (cf. ix. 29), and only St. Lnke the word of power, 
^ Receive thy sight/ by which the cure was effected; while 
he and St. Mark record nearly similar words, passed over 
by St. Matthew ; ‘ Thy faith hath made thee whole ’—‘ Thy 
faith hath saved thee ’ (cf. Matt. ix. 22 ; Mark ix. 23 ; 
Luke xvii. 19). The man, who had hitherto been tied to 
one place, now used aright his restored eyesight; for he 
used it to follow Jesus in the way, and this with the free 
outbreaks of a thankful heart, himself ‘ glorifying God ’ 
(Luke xiii. 13 ; xvii. 15), and being the occasion also that 
^ all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God ’ as 
well (Matt. ix. 8; Luke xiii. 17; Acts iii. 8-10). 


31 . THE CURSING OF THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 
Matt. xxi. iS-aaj Maek xi. 12-14; 20-24. 

IHIS miracle was wrought upon tlie Monday of the 



JL week of Passion. On the Sunday of Palms our 
blessed Lord had made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, 
and in the evening,—since even now his hour, though 
close at hand, was not altogether come,—He retired from 
the snares and perils of the city to the safer Bethany, to 
the house, probably, of those sisters whom He had so lately 
made rich with a restored brother, and there passed the 
night. On the Monday morning, as He was returning from 
Bethany to his ministry in the city very early, indeed 
before sunrise, the word against the fig-tree was spoken. 
That same evening He with his disciples went back to 
Bethany to lodge there, but probably at so late an hour 
that the darkness prevented these from marking the effects 
which had followed upon that word. It was not till the 
morning of Tuesday that ‘ they saw the fig-tree dried up 
from the roots! Such is the exact order of events, in the 
telling of which St. Mark shows himself a more accurate 
observer of times than the first Evangelist. Hot, indeed, 
that this gives him any superiority ; our advantage'is that 
we have both records:—St. Matthew’s, who, more con¬ 
cerned for the inner idea, hastened on to that, omitting 
circumstances which came between, that he might present 
the whole event as one, at a single glance, in a sino-le 
picture, without the historical perspective,—of which 
he at no time takes any especial note, his gifts and his aim 
being different^—and also St. Mark’s, who was concerned 


CURSING THE BAEREN FIG-TREE. 463 

likewise for the picturesque setting forth of the truth in 
its external details, as it was linked with times and with 
places, as it gradually unfolded itself before the eyes of men. 

But while such differences as these are easily set at one, 
and they who magnify them into difficulties are the true 
Pharisees of history, straining at gnats and swallowing 
camels, there are other and undoubted difficulties in this 
narrative, such as we are bound not to evade, hut to meet. 
Take the facts as recorded by St. Matthew: ‘ Now in the 
morning., as He returned into the city, He hungered. And 
when He saw a fig-tree^ in the way, He came to it, and found 
nothing the'^eon hut leaves only, and said to it. Let no fruit 
grow on thee henceforvjard for ever. And presently the fig- 
tree withered away I We first ask ourselves here, how 
should our Lord, knowing, as by his divine power He must, 
that there was no fruit upon that tree, have gone to seek 
it there, made to his disciples as though He had expected 
to find it? Was this consistent with a perfect sincerity 
and truth ? Slight as would have been the deceit, yet, if 
it was such, it would trouble the clearness of our image of 
Him, whom we conceive as the absolute Lord of truth. It 
is again perplexing, that He should have treated the tree 
as a moral agent, punishing it as though unfruitfulness 
had been any guilt upon its part. This, in itself perplex¬ 
ing, becomes infinitely more so through a notice of St. 
Mark’s ; which indeed the order of the natural year would 
of itself have suggested, namely, that ^ the time of figs was 
not yet: ’ so that at the time when they could not reason¬ 
ably be expected,* He sought, and was displeased at failing 
to find, them. For, whatever the undermeaning might 
have been in treating the tree as a moral agent, and 
granting such treatment to have been entirely justified, 
yet all seems again lost and obscured, if the tree could 

» XvKriv iiiav. Assuredly fiiav should have its emphasis here, and b6 
reproduced in the translation, 

» SD/cov IriTtiv, fiatvoixsyov (Marcus Antoniuus, xi. 33). 


464 tee cuesing of 

not have been otherwise than without fruit at such a time. 
For the symbol must needs he carried through; if by a 
figure we attribute guilt to the tree for not having fruit, 
we must be consistent, and show that it might have had 
such, that there was no justifying reason why it should 
have had none. 

Upon the first point, that the Lord approached the tree, 
appearing to expect fruit upon it, and yet knowing that He 
should find none, deceiving thereby those who were with 
Him, who no doubt believed that what He professed to 
look for, He expected to find, it is sufiicient to observe 
that a similar charge might be made against all figurative 
teaching, whether by word or by deed: for in all such 
there is a worshipping of truth in tJie spirit and not in 
the letter; often a forsaking of it in the letter, for the 
better honouring and establishing of it in the spirit. A 
parable is told as true; and though the facts are feigned, 
it {s true, because of the moral or spiritual truth which 
sustains the outward fabric of the story; true, because it 
is the shrine of truth, and because the truth which it 
enshrines looks through and through it. Even so a sym¬ 
bolic action is done as real, as professing to mean something; 
and yet, although not meaning the thing which it pro¬ 
fesses to mean, is no deception, since it means something 
infinitely higher and deeper, of which the lower action is a 
type, and in which that lower is lost; transfigured and 
transformed by the higher, whereof it is made the vehicle. 
What was it, for instance, here, if Christ did not intend 
really to look for fruit on that tree, being aware that it 
had none ? yet He did intend to show how it would fare 
with a man or with a nation, when God came looking 
from it for the fruits of righteousness?, and found nothing 
but the abundant leaves of a boastful yet empty profes¬ 
sion.* 

^ Augustine Evang. ii. 51): Non cnim omne quod fingimus 

mendacium est: sed quando id fingimus, quod nihil significat, tunc est 


THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 


465 


But liow, it is asked, sliall we justify liis putting forth 
his anger on a tree ? Now the real offence which is here 
taken, at least by many, is that He should have put forth 
his anger at all 5 that God should ever show Himself as a 
punishing God; that there should be any such thing as 
‘ the wrath of the Lamb,’ as the having to give account of 
advantages, as a day of doom. But seeing that such 
things are, how needful that men should not forget it. 
Yet they might have forgot it, as far as the teaching of 
the miracles wrought by our Lord went, except for this 
one—all the others being miracles of help and of healing. 
And even the severity of this, with what mercy was it 
tempered ! Christ did not, like Moses and Elijah, make 
the assertion of God’s holiness and of his hatred of evil 
at the expense of the lives of many men, but only at the 
cost of a single unfeeling tree. £His miracles of mercy 
were numberless, and on men; his miracle of judgment 
was but one, and on a tree.^ 

mendacium. Cum autem fictio nostra refertur ad aliquam significationem, 
non est mendacium, sed aliqua figura yeritatis. Alioquin omnia quse a 
gapientibus et sanctis viris, vel etiam ab ipso Domino figurate dicta sunt, 
mendacia deputabuntur, quia secundum usitatum intellectum non subsi- 
etit veritas talibus dictis. . . Sicut autem dicta, ita etiam facta finguntur 
sine mendacio ad aliquam rem significandam; unde est etiam illud Do¬ 
mini quod in fici arbore quaesivit fructum eo tempore, quo ilia poma non- 
dum essent. Non enim dubium est illam inquisitionem non fuisse veram j 
quivis enim hoiuinum sciret, si non divinitate, vel tempore, poma illam 
arborem non habere. Fictio igitur quae ad aliquam veritatem refertur, 
tigura estquae non refertur, mendacium est. Cf. Serm. Ixxxix. 4-6: 
Quaerit intelligentem, non facit errantem. 

1 Hilary {Comm, in Matt, in loc.): In eo quidem bonitatis Dominicae 
argumentum reperiemus. Nam ubi otferre voluit procuratae a se salutis, 
exemplum, virtutis suae potestatem in humanis corporibus exercuit: spem 
futurorum et animae salutem curis praesentium aegritudinum commen- 
dans : . . . nunc vero, ubi in contumaces formam severitatis constituebat, 
futuri speciem damno arboris indicavit, ut infidelitatis periculum, sine 
detrimento eorum in quorum redemptionem venerat, doceretur. Thus, 
too, Grotius: Clementissimus Dominus, quuni innumeris miraculis sua in 
nos aetema beneficia figurasset, severitatem judicii, quod infrugiferoa 
homines manet, uno duntaxat signo, idque non in homine, sed in non sen- 
gura arbore, adumbravit ] ut certi essemus bonorum operum sterilitatem 
gratiae fecundantis aderaptione puniri. Theophylact brings out in the 


4-66 


THE CUESING OF 


But then, say some, it was unjust to deal thus with a 
tree at all, which, being incapable of good or of evil, was 
as little a fit object of blame as of praise, of punishment 
as reward. But this very objection does, in truth, involve 
that it was not unjust, that the tree was a thing, which 
might therefore lawfully be used merely as a means for 
ends lying beyond itself. Man is the prince of creation, 
and all things else are to serve him, and then rightly ful¬ 
fil their subordinate uses when they do serve him,—in 
their life or in their death,—yielding unto him fruit, or 
warning him in a figure what shall be the curse and penalty 
of unfruitfulness. Christ did not attribute moral respon¬ 
sibilities to the tree, when He smote it because of its 
unfruitfulness, but He did attribute to it a fitness for 
representing moral qualities.* All our language concern¬ 
ing trees, a good tree, a had tree, a tree which ought to 
bear, is the same continual transfer to them of moral 
qualities, and a witness for the natural fitness of the 
Lord’s language,—the language indeed of an act, rather 
than of words. By his word, however (Luke xiii. 6-9),^ 

same way tlie (piXavOpcjiria of this miracle; ^ijpalvn ovv to liv^pov, "iva 

CMippoi’lay avOfHOTTOvg. 

^ Witsius (Meletem. Leiden, p. 414) well: At quid tandem commisit in- 
felix arbor, ob quam rem tarn inopinato mulctaretur exitio? Siverborum 
proprietatem sectemur, omnino nihil. Creaturse enim rationis expertes, 
uti virtutis ac vitii, ita et prsemii ac pmnse, proprie et stricte loquendo, 
incapaces sunt. Potest tamen in creaturis istis aliquid existere, quod, 
analogica et symbolica quadani ratione, et vitio et poense respondeat. 
Defect us fructuum in arbore ceteroquin generosa, succulenta, bene plan- 
tata, frondosa, multa pollicente, symbolice respondet vitio animi degene- 
rantis, luxuriosi, ingrati, simulati, superbi, vera tamen virtute destituti; 
subitanea arboris ex imprecatione Chrisfi arefactio, qua tollitur quid- 
quid in arbore videbatur esse boni, analogiam quandam habet cum justis- 
gima Christi vindicta, qua in eos animadvertit, qui benignitate sua abu- 
tuntur. Quemadmodum igitur peccata ista hominum vere merentur 
poenam, ita Kad avaXoyiav dici potest, arborem, ita uti desmpsimua 
comparatam, mereri exitium. 

2 The fig-tree appears prominently in the New Testament on two oc¬ 
casions; here and at Luke xiii. 6; on neither as the symbol of that which 
is good. Isidore of Pelusium (in Cramer, Catena, in loc.) refers to the 
old tradition, that it was the tree of temptation i'n Paradise. For tradi- 


THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 467 

He had already in some sort prepared his disciples for 
understanding and interpreting his act; and the not un¬ 
frequent use of this yery symbol in the Old Testament, as 
at Hos. ix* 10 3 Joel i. 7, must have likewise assisted them 
here. 

Bat, conceding all this, it may still he objected. Do not 
those words of St. Mark, ^for the time of jigs was not yetj 
acquit the tree even of this figurative guilt, defeat the sym¬ 
bol, and put it, so to speak, in contradiction with itself? 
Does it not perplex us in Him, of whom we claim above all 
things that highest reason should guide his every action, 
that He should look for figs, when they could, not be 
found;—^that He should bear Himself as one indignant, 
when He did not find them ? The simplest, and as it ap¬ 
pears to me, the entirely satisfying, explanation of this 
difficulty is the following. At that early period of the 
year, March or April, neither leaves nor fruit were natu¬ 
rally to be looked for on a fig-tree (the passages often 
quoted to the contrary not making out, as I think, their 
point ^), nor in ordinary circumstances would any one have 

tions of impurity connected with it, see Tertullian, Be Pudicit. 6 ; as 
Buifon calls it arbre indecent; on which see a learned note in Sepp. Lehen 
Jesu, vol. iii. p. 225, seq. Bernard {In Cant. Serm. lx. 3); Maledicit ficul- 
nese pro eo quod non invenit in ea fructum. Bene ficus, quae bona licet 
Patriarcharum radice prodierit, numquam tamen in altum proficere, 
numquara se humo attollere voluit, numquam respondere radici proceri- 
tate ramorum, generositate florum, fecunditate fructuum. Male prorsus 
tibi cum tua radice convenit, arbor pusilla, tortuosa, nodosa. Radix enim 
sancta. Quid ea dignum tuis apparet in ramis ? The Greek proverbial 
expressions, ovkivoq dvr]pj a poor strengthless man, <tvkIvt} iTriKovpiuj un¬ 
helpful help, ^ succours of Spain,’ supply further parallels. 

^ Moreover all explanations which go to prove that, in the natural or¬ 
der of things, there might have been in Palestine, even at this early 
season, figs on that tree, winter figs which had survived till spring, or 
the early figs of the spring itself, seem to me beside the mark. For, be 
this fact as it may, they shatter upon that ov yap pv Kaipbg ovkmv of St. 
Mark; from which it is plain that no such calculation of probabilities 
brought the Lord thither, but those abnormal leaves, which He had a 
right to count would be accompanied with abnormal fruit. In various 
ingenious ways it has been sought to make these words not to mean what 
they bear upon their front that they do mean, and so to disencumber the 


^68 


THE CUESINQ OF 


sought them there. But that tree, bj putting forth leaves, 
made pretension to be something more than others, to have 

passage of difliculties wliicli beset it. The most objectionable device of 
all is the placing of a note of interrogation after avKujv, and making the 
sacred historian to burst out in an exclamation of wonder at the barren¬ 
ness of the fig-tree,— ‘for was it not the time of Jigs?^ But the uniform 
absence of this sort of passionate narration—supplying the reader v^ith 
his admiration, his wonder, his abhorrence, all ready made—is one of the 
most striking features of the Gospel story. Scarcely better, though more 
ingenious, is Daniel Heinsius’ suggestion, whic^ has found favour wdth 
Knatchbull, Gataker, and others. His help too is in a different pointing 
and accenting of the passage, as thus, ov yap riv, Katpog (tvk-iov, ‘For zohere 
He was, it was the season of Jigs' —in the mild climate of Judsea, where, 
as we know, the fruits of the earth ripened nearly a month earlier than 
in Galilee. But MSS. and ancient Versions give not the least support; 
and to express ibi lod by o5 yap is as awkward and forced as well can 
be. Deyling (Obss. Sac. vol. iii. p. 227), who has Kuinoel, Wetstein, 
and others on his side, is better. He makes oi;=..{ 5 ;rw, and *rr,ipoc=tempu3 
colligendi fructus, the time for the gathering the figs. The harvest had 
not yet swept away the crop; therefore the Lord could reasonably look 
for fruit upon the tree; and the words will explain, not the statement 
‘He found nothing hut leaves,' immediately preceding, but his earlier- 
mentioned going to the tree, expecting to find fruit thereon. The re¬ 
moteness of the words to which, this clause will then refer is not a fatal 
objection, for see Mark xvi. 3, 4; and xii. 12, where the words, Hor they 
knew that He had spoken against them,’ account for their seeking to lay 
hold on Him, not for their fearing the people. But Kaipbg rtuv Kap-n-Mv 
(Matt. xxi. 34; cf. Luke xx. lo), on which the upholders of this schema 
greatly rely, means the time of the ripe fruits, not the time of the in- 
gathered. Another explanation, which Hammond, D’Oiitrein, and many 
more have embraced, makes Kaip6c=-icaiubg fvtpnpoc, and St. Mark to say 
that it was an unfavourable season for figs. A very old, although almost 
unnoticed, reading, 6 yap icaipbg ovk ijv avKix)v, might be urged in support 
of this. But we want examples of Kaipog q.s = Knipug fv^opog, for Matt, 
xiii. 30, Luke xx. 10, which are sometimes adduced, do not satisfy. 
Conscious of this, Olshausen and a writer in the Theol. Stud, und Krit. 
1JJ43, p. 131, seq., have slightly modified this view. These do not make 
Kaipog ‘season,’ since the season for the chief crop, whether good or bad, 
had not arrived, and therefore there was no room for expressing a judg¬ 
ment about it; but take it in the sense of weather, temperature; Kaipbg 
=:tempus opportunum. If there had been favourable weather, at once 
moist and warm, there would have been figs on the tree; not indeed the 
main crop, but the ficus prsecox (see Pliny H. N. xv. 19), the early spring 
fig, which was counted an especial delicacy (‘ the figs that are first ripe,’ 
Jer. xxiv. 2), and of which Isaiah speaks (xxviii. 4) as ‘ the hasty fruit 
before the summer, which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is 
yet in his hand he eateth it up’ (cf. Hos. ix. 10); or if not these, the 
late winter fig, which Shaw mentions (Winer, Fealworterbuch, s. v. 


THE BARREN FIG- TREE. 


469 


fruit upon it, seeing that in the fig-tree the fruit appears 
before the leaves. ^ It, so to speak, vaunted itself to he in ad¬ 
vance of all the other trees, challenged the passer-by that 
he should come and refresh himself from it. Yet when 
the Lord accepted the challenge, and drew near, it proved 
to be but as the others, without fruit as they; for indeed, 
as the Evangelist observes, the time of figs had not yet 
arrived,—the fault, if one may use the word, of this tree 
lying in its pretension, in its making a show to run before 
the rest, when it did not so indeed. Jt was condemned, 
not so much for having no fruit, as that, not having fruit, 
it clothed itself abundantly with leaves, with the foliage 
which, according to the natural order of the tree’s develop¬ 
ment, gave pledge and promise that fruit should be found 
on it, if sought.^ 

And this will then exactly answer to the sin of Israel, 
which under this tree was symbolized,—that sin being, not 
so much that it was without fruit, as that it boasted of so 
much. The true fruit of that people, as of any people before 
the Incarnation, would have been to own that it had no 
fruit, that without Christ, without the incarnate Son of 
God, it could do nothing; to have presented itself before 
God bare and naked and empty altogether. But this was 

Feigenbaum) as first ripening after the tree has lost its leaves, and 
hanging on the tree, in a mild season, into the spring. For this use of 
Kaif) 6 (: a passage much to the point has been cited horn the Hecuba of 
Euripides: 

OuKovp Savov^ ti yi] fi'tv Kaur'i^ 

Tvxcvcia Kaipov Qtodevj fv crrdxci' (f>fp(if 
XpTjGTij o’, ctfiapTOVff' div auTr'/v Tvxeivj 

XaKOV SidojGi Kapirov. 

Upon this Matthiae says: Quum Kaipog omnia complectatur, quae alicui 
rei opportuna et consentanea sunt, hoc loco proprie significat omnia ea, 
quae agris, ut fructus ferant, accommodata sunt, ut pluviam, caeli com- 
modam temperiem, quo sensu accepisse Euripidem ex adjecto 6 t 69 (v 
patet. Yet allowing all this, there is a long step between it and proving 
Kaipdg freKujv to be=terapu8 opportunum ficis. See Sir T. Browne, Obss. 
upon Plants mentioned in ScripUire ,— Works, vol. iv. pp. 162—167. 

1 Pliny (//. A. xvi. 49): Ei demum serius folium nascitur quam 
ponium. 


THE CUBSINO OT 


470 

exactly wliat Israel refused to do. Other nations might 
have nothing to boast of, but they by their own show¬ 
ing had much.^ And yet on closer inspection, the sub¬ 
stance of righteousness was as much wanting on their 
part as anywhere among the nations (Eom. ii. i; Matt, 
xxi. 33-43). 

And how should it have been otherwise ? ‘/or the time of 
figs was not yet ; ’—the time for the bare stock and stem of 
humanity to array itself in bud and blossom, with leaf and 
fruit, had not come, till its engrafting on the nobler stock 
of the true Man. All which anticipated this, which seemed 
to say that it could he anything, or do anything, otherwise 
than in Him and by Him, was deceptive and premature. 
The other trees had nothing, but they did not pretend to 
have anything; this tree had nothing, but it gave out that 
it had much. So was it severally with Gentile and with 
Jew. The Gentiles were empty of all fruits of righteous¬ 
ness, but they owned it; the Jews were empty, but they 
vaunted that they were full. The Gentiles were sinners, 
but they hypocrites and pretenders to boot, and by so much 
farther from the kingdom of God, and more nigh unto a 
curse.^ Their guilt was not that they had not the perfect 
fruits of faith, for the time of such had not yet arrived; but 
that, not having, they so boastfully gave out that they had: 
their condemnation was, not that they were not healed, but 
that, being unhealed, they counted themselves whole. The 
law would have done its work, the very work for which 
God ordained it, if it had stripped them of these boastful 
leaves, or indeed had hindered from ever putting them 
forth (Eom. v. 20). 

^ It is not a little remarkable that it was with tbe fig-leaves that in 
Paradise Adam attempted to deny his nakedness, and to present himself 
as other than a sinner before God (Gen., iii. 7). 

^ Witsius (Meletem. Leiden, p. 415): Folia sunt jactatio legis, templf 
cultus, casrimoniarum, pietatis denique et sanctimoniae, quarum se specie 
valde efferebant. Frnctus sunt resipiscentia, fides, sanctitas, quibus, 
carebant. 


THE BARREN FIG-TREE, 


47 ^ 


Here tlien, according to this explanation, there is no diffi¬ 
culty either in the Lord’s going to the tree at that unsea¬ 
sonable time,—He would not have gone, but for those 
deceitful leaves which announced that fruit was there,—nor 
in the (symbolic) punishment of tb,e unfruitful tree at a 
season of the year when, according to the natural order, it 
could not have had any. ^It was punished not for being 
without fruit, but for proclaiming by the voice of those 
leaves that it had fruit; not for being barren, but for being 
false.*] And this was the guilt of Israel, a guilt so much 
deeper than the guilt of the nations. The Epistle to the 
Romans supplies the key to the right understanding of 
this miracle; such passages especially as ii. 3, 17-27; x. 
3, 4, 21; xi. 7, 10. Hor should that remarkable parallel, 
‘ And all the trees of the field shall know that I the Lord 
have dried up the green tree, and made the dry tree to 
flourish’ (Ezek. xvii. 24), be left out of account.^ And 
then the sentence, ^ No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for 
ever/ will be just the reversal of the promise that in them 
all nations of the earth should be blessed—the symbolic 
counterstroke to the ratification of the Levitical priesthood 
through the putting forth, by Aaron’s rod, of bud and 
blossom’and fruit in a night (Hum. xvii. 8). Henceforth 
the Jewish synagogue is stricken with a perpetual barren¬ 
ness.* Once it was everything, but now it is nothing, to 
the world; it stands apart, like ^ a thing forbid; ’ what 
little it has, it communicates to none; the curse has come 

^ Some liave thought that our Lord alludes to this work of his, when 
He asks, ‘If they do these things in a green tree, what shall he done in 
thejry ? ’ (Luke xxiii. 31). If thus it fared with Him, ‘ a green tree,’ 
full of sap, full of life, if He were thus bruised and put to grief, how 
should it fare with Israel after the flesh, ‘ the dry ’ tree, withered under 
the curse which He had spoken against it ? 

2 Witsius (Meletem. Leiden, p. 415): Parabolica ficus maledictio sig- 
nificavit, futurum esse ut populus Israeliticus, justa Dei indignatione 
Omni Yigore et succo spiritualis fecunditatis privetur, et (juia fructus 
bonorum operum proferre isthoc tempore noluit, dein nec possit. Ac 
veluti maledictionis sententiam ficus arefactio protinus excepit, sic et 
Judaeorum natio, mox post spretum proterve Messiam, exaruit. 


4-;2 THE CUESING OF. 

upon it, tliat no man henceforward shall eat fruit of it for 
ever.^ 

And yet this ^for ever ’ has its merciful limitation, when 
we come to transfer the curse from the tree to that of which 
the tree was as a living*parable; a limitation which the word 
itself favours and allows; which lies hidden in it, to be re¬ 
vealed in due time. None shall eat fruit of that tree to the 
end of the present age, not until these ^ times of the Gen¬ 
tiles ’ are fulfilled. A day indeed will come when Israel, 
which now says, ^ I am a dry tree,’ shall consent to that 
word of its true Lord, which of old it denied, ‘ From Me is 
thy fruit found ’ (Hos. xiv. 8), and shall be arrayed with the 
richest foliage and fruit of all the trees of the field. The 
Lord, in his great discourse upon the last things (Matt, 
xxiv.), implies this, when He gives this commencing con¬ 
version of the Jews, under the image of the re-clothing of 
the bare and withered fig-tree with leaf and bud, as the 

^ Augustine brings out often and well the figurative character of this 
miracle ;—though, with most expositors, he misses the chief stress of this 
tree’s (symbolic) guilt, namely, its running before its time, and by its 
leaves proclaiming it had fruit; when its true part and that which the 
season justified, would have been to present itself with neither. He 
makes its real barrenness, contrasted with its pomp of leaves, to be the 
stress of its fault, leaving out of sight the untimeliness of those leaves and 
of that pretence of fruit, which is the most important element in the 
whole. Thus Serm. Ixxvii. 5 : Etiam ipsa quae a Domino facta sunt, 
aliquid significantia erant, quasi verba, si dici potest, visibilia et aliquid 
slgnificantia. Quod maxime apparet in eo quod praeter tempus poma 
quaesivit in arbore, et quia non invenit, arbori maledicens aridam fecit. 
Hoc factum nisi figuratum accipiatur, stultum invenitur; primo qujesisse 
poma in ilia arbore, quando tempus non erat ut essent in ulla arbore: 
deinde si pomorum jam tempus esset, non habere poma quae culpa arboris 
esset ? Sed quia significabat, quaerere se non solum folia, sed et fructuin, 
id est, non solum verba, sed et facta hominum, arefaciendo ubi sola folia 
invenit, significavit eorum pcenam, qui loqui bona possunt, facere bona 
nolunt. Cf. Sei-m. xcviii. 3 : Christus nesciebat, quod rusticus sciebat ? 
quod noverat arboris cultor, non noverat arboris creator? Cum ergo 
esuriens poma quaesivit in arbore, significavit se aliquid esurire, et aliquid 
aliud quaerere; et arborem illam sine fructu folds plenam reperit, et 
maledixit; et aruit. Quid arbor fecerat fructum non afierendo ? Quae 
culpa arboris infecunditas ? Sed sunt qui fructum voluntate dare non 
possunt. Illorum est culpa sterilitas, quorum fecunditas est voluntas. 
Cf Con. Faust, xxii. 25. 


THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 


473 


sign of tlie breaking in of the new seon: ‘ Now learn a 
parable of the fig-tree. When his branch is yet tender, 
and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: 
so likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know 
that it is near, even at the doors’ (ver. 32, 33). 

It would appear from St. Matthew that some beginnings 
of the threatened withering began to show themselves, 
almost as soon as the word of the Lord was spoken; a 
shuddering fear may have run through all the leaves of the 
tree, which was thus stricken at its heart. But it was not 
till the next morning, as the disciples returned, that they 
took note of the utter perishing of the tree, which was now 
^ dried up from the roots ; ’ whereupon ‘ Peter calling to re¬ 
membrance, saithunto Him: Master, behold, the fig-tree which 
Thou cursedst is withered away I He will not let the occa¬ 
sion go by without its further lesson. What He had done, 
they might do the same and more. Faith in God would 
place them in relation with the same powers which He 
wielded, so that they might do mightier things even than 
this at which they marvelled so much. 


3a. THE HEALING OF MALCIim hAU 
Ltjee xxii. 49-51. 


T he blow struck by a disciple, who would fain have 
fought for his Master, that He should not be delivered 
to the Jews, is recorded by all four Evangelists (Matt. xxvi. 
51; Mark xiv. 47 ; Luke xxii. 50 ; John xviii. 10); but the 
miracle belongs only to St. Luke, for he only tells how the 
Lord made good the injury which his disciple had inflicted, 
touched and restored the ear which he had cut off. It is 
possible that a double interest may have specially moved 
this Evangelist to include in his narrative this work of 
grace and power. As a physician, this cure, the only one 
of its kind which we know of our Lord’s performing, the 
only miraculous healing of a wound inflicted by external 
violence, would attract his special attention. And then, 
further, nothing lay nearer to his heart, or cohered more 
intimately with the purpose of his Gospel, than the por¬ 
traying of the Lord on the side of his gentleness, his mercy, 
his benignity; and of all these there was an eminent mani¬ 
festation in this gracious work wrought on behalf of one 
who was in arms against his life. 

St. Luke, no doubt, knew very weU, though he did not 
think good to set it down in his narrative, whose hand it 
was that struck this blow,—whether that the deed might 
still have brought him into trouble, though this appears an 
exceedingly improbable explanation, or from some other 
cause. The two earlier Evangelists preserve a like silence 
on this head, and are content with generally designating 


' THE HEALING OF MALCHUS' EAR. 


475 


aim,—St. Matthew as ^ one of them who were with Jesus/ St. 
Mark as one of them which stood hy.’ It is only from St. 
John we learn, what perhaps we might otherwise have sur¬ 
mised, but could not certainly have known, that it was 
Peter who struck this only blow stricken in defence of the 
Lord. He also tells us what perhaps the other Evangelists 
did not know, the name of the High Priest’s servant who 
was wounded; ‘ the servant's name was Malchus.^ ^ It is in 
entire consistency with all else which we read, that this 
fact should have come within the circle of St. John’s know¬ 
ledge, who had, in some way that is not explained to us, 
acquaintance with the High Priest (John xviii. 15), and so 
accurate a knowledge of the constitution of his household 
that he is able to tell us of one, who later in the night pro¬ 
voked Peter to his denial of Christ, that he was ‘ his kins¬ 
man whose ear Peter cut off’ (ver. 26). 

The whole incident is singularly characteristic; the 
wordA)Q2cr&r for the rest of the Apostles proves, when 
occasion requires, the su-orc^-bearer also—not indeed in 
this altogether of a different temper from the others, but 
showing himself prompter and more daring in action than 
them all. While they are inquiring, ‘ Lord, shall we smite 
with the sword ? ’ (Luke xxiii. 38) perplexed between the 
natural instinct of defence, with love to their perilled 
Lord, on the one side, and his precepts that they should 
not resist the evil, on the other,—he waits not for the 
answer; but impelled by the natural courage of his heart,* 
and careless of the odds against him, aims a blow at one, 
probably the foremost of the band, the first that was 
daring to lay profane hands on the sacred person of his 
Lord. This was ^ a servant of the High Priest/ one there¬ 
fore who, according to the proverb, ‘ like master like man,’ 

^ Joseplius twice mentions an Arabian king of this name, B. J. i. 14. i; 
Antiqq. xiii. 5. i. Malckus, which means king, was the proper name of 
Porphyry, the Neoplatonic philosopher. Longinus, rendering it into 
Greek, called him nop^vpioc, or the Purple-wearer. 

• Josephus characterizes the Galilaeans as /saxifiovi:, 

'21 


4/6 THE HEALING OF MALCHHS' EAU, 

may have been especially forward in this bad work,— 
himself a Caiaphas of a meaner stamp; a volunteer too 
on the present occasion, and not, as the ^ officers,^ * in the 
execution of his duty. Peter was not likely to strike with 
other than a right good will; and no doubt the blow was 
intended to cleave down the aggressor; though by God’s 
good providence the stroke was turned aside, and grazing 
the head at which it was aimed, but still coming down 
with sheer descent, cut off the ear,—the ^ right ear/ as St. 
Luke and St. John tell us,—of the assailant, who thus 
hardly escaped with his life. 

The words with which our Lord rebuked the untimely 
zeal^ of his disciple are differently given by different 
Evangelists, or rather each has given a different portion, 
each one enough to indicate the spirit in which all was 
spoken. St. Matthew records them most at length (xxvi. 
52-54); while St. Luke passes them over altogether. 
That moment of uttermost confusion might seem unsuit¬ 
able for so long a discourse, indeed hardly to have given 
room for it. We shall best suppose that while the healing 
of Malchus was proceeding, and all were watching and 

^ He is dovXog not VTrrjpsrrjQ (John xHii. 3). 

2 Modern expositors are sometimes much too hard upon this exploit of 
Peter’s; Calvin: Stulto suo zelo Petrus gravem infamiam magistro suo 
ej usque doctrinse inusserat,—with much more in this tone. The wisest 
word upon the matter (and on its Old-Testament parallel, Exod. ii. 12) is 
Augustine’s Con. Faust, xxii. 70. He keeps as far from this unmeasured 
rebuke as from the extravagance of Romish expositors, who exalt this 
act as one of a holy indignation ; liken it to the act of Phinehas (Num. 
XXV. 7) by which ho won the high priesthood for his family for ever. 
Leo the Great (^Serm. L. 4) had led the way : Nam et beatus Petrus, qui 
aaimosiore constantia Domino cohierebat, et contra violentorum impetus 
fervore sanctse caritatis exarserat, in servum principis sacerdotum iisus 
est gladio, et aurem viri ferocius instantis abscidit. Another finds in that 
command, ‘ Fut up thy sword into his place,' a sanction for the wielding of 
the civil sword by the Church; for, as he bids us note, Christ does not say, 
‘ Flit away thy sword; ’ but ^ Fut tip thy sivord into his place,' —that is, 
‘ Keep it in readiness to draw forth again, when the right occasion shall 
arrive,’ Tertullian, in an opposite extreme, concludes from these words 
that the military service is always unlawful for the Christian {De Idoloh 
16) : Omnem militem Dominus in Petro exarmando discinxit. 


THE HEALING OF MALCHUS' EAB. 


477 


wondering, tlie Lord spoke these quieting words to his 
disciples. Possibly too his captors, who had feared re¬ 
sistance or attempts at rescue on the part of his followers, 
now when they found that his words prohibited aught of 
the kind, may have been unwilling to interrupt Him. To 
Peter, and in him to all the other disciples. He says: ^ Put 
up again thy sword into his place ; for all they that tahe the 
sivord shall perish by the swordi Christ, joining together 
the taking of the sword and the perishing by the sword, 
refers, no doubt, to the primal law, ‘Whoso sheddeth 
man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed ’ (Gen. ix. 6 ; 
cf. Hev. xiii. lo). This saying has been sometimes wrongly 
understood, as though the Lord were pacifying Peter with 
considerations such as these, ‘ There is no need for thee to 
assume the task of punishing these violent men: they 
have taken the sword, and by the just judgment of God 
they will perish by the sword.’ ^ But the warning against 
taking the sword connects itself so closely with the com¬ 
mand, ‘Put up again thy sword into his place/ and the 
meaning of the verse following (Matt. xxvi. 53) is so 
plainly, ‘ Thinkest thou that I need a feeble help like 
thine, when, instead of you, twelve weak trembling men, 
inexpert in war, I might even now at this latest moment 
pray to my Father, and He will presently give Me^ more 
than twelve legions ^ of Angels to fight on my behalf? ’ — 

^ Thus Grotius: Noli, Petre, consideratione ejus quss mihi infertur in- 
jurias concitatior, Deo praeripere ultionein. Levia enim sunt vulnera 
quae a te pati possunt. Stat enim rata sententia, crudeles istos et san- 
guinarios, etiam te quiescente, gravissimas Deo daturos poenas suo san¬ 
guine. This interpretation is a good deal older than Grotius. Chrysostom 
has it; and Euthymius sees in these words a Trpoprjrda Trjg tmv 

klTfXQoVTMU avrip ‘loV^aiMV. 

2 Y\apaaTY]aei /ioi=servitio meo sistet (Rom. vi. 19; xii. 1). 

^ We are reminded here of the TrkrjOoc (rrpandg ovpaviov (Luke ii. 13), 
and other language of the same kind. Without falling in with the dreams 
of the Areopagite, we may see intimations here of a hierarchy in heaven. 
Bengel: Angeli in sues numeros et or dines divisi sunt. 

^ Jerome: Non indigeo duodecim Apostolorum auxilio, qui possum 
hahere duodecim legiones angelici exercitus. Maldonatus: Mihi quidem 
verosimile videtur Christum a-ngelos non militihus, sed discipulis oppo- 


f78 THE HEALING OF AIALCHUS' EAE. ‘1 

that all tlie ingennity wliicli Grotius and others use, and | 
it is mncli, to recommend the other interpretation, cannot 1 
persuade to its acceptance. This mention of the ‘ twelve J 
legions of Angels,^ whom it was free to Him to summon to | 
his aid, brings the passage into striking relation with ^ 
2 Kin. vi. 17. A greater than Elisha is here, who thus | 
speaking would purge the spiritual eye of his troubled j 
disciple, and make him to see the mount of God, full of i 
chariots and horses of fire, armies of heaven camping I 
round his Lord, which a beck from Him would bring 
forth, to the utter discomfiture of his enemies. ‘ But how h 
then shall the Scriptures he fulfilled, that thus it must he? * i 
The temptation to claim the assistance of that heavenly ; 
host,—supposing Him to have felt the temptation,—is ; 
quelled in an instant; for how then should that eternal 
purpose, that will of God, of which Scripture was the 
outward expression, ‘ that thus it must he/ have then been 
fulfilled (cf. Zech. xiii. 7) ? In St. John the same entire 
subordination of his own will to his Father’s, which must 
hinder Him from claiming this unseasonable help, finds its 
utterance under another image : ‘ The cup which my Father 
hath given Me, shall I not drink it ? ’ This language is ; 
frequent in Scripture, resting on the image of some potion ; 
which, however bitter, must yet be drained. Besides Matt. ^ 
XX. 22, 23 ; xxvi. 39, where the cup is one of holy suffering, I 
there is often, especially in the Old Testament, mention of 
the cup of God’s anger (Isai. li. 17, 225 Ps. xi. 6; Ixxv. 8 ; 
Jer. XXV. 15, 17; xlix. 12; Lam. iv. 21; Eev. xiv. 10; ' 
xvi. 19); in every case the cup being one from which flesh ' 

nere, qui duodecim erant, ac propterea duodecim non plures nec pauciores 
legiones nominasse, ut indicaret posse se pro duodecim kominibus duode- ' 
cim legiones habere. The fact that the number of Apostles who were • 
even tempted to draw sword in Christ’s behalf was, by the apostasy of : 
Judas, reduced now to eleven, need not remove us from this interprka- ^ 
tion. The Lord contemplates them in their ideal completeness. He does 
the same elsewhere: ^ Ye shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the ■ 
twelve tribes of Israel ’ (Matt. xix. 28 ; cf. Luke xxii. 30)—when, indeed, 'S 
it was not Judas, but his successor, that should occupy a throne. | 



THE HEALING OF MALCHUS' EAB. 479 

and blood shrinks back, which a man wonld fain pnt away 
from his lips, though a moral necessity in the case of the 
godly, and a physical in that of the ungodly, will not suffer 
it to be thus put aside. 

The words that follow, ^Suffer ye thus far/ are still 
addressed to the disciples : ^ Hold now ; thus far ye have 
gone in resistance, but let it be no further 5 no more of 
this.’ The explanation, which makes them to have been 
spoken by the Lord to his captors, that they should bear 
with Him till He had accomplished the cure, has nothing 
to recommend it. Having thus checked the too forward 
zeal of his disciples, and now carrying out into act his own 
precept, ‘ Love your enemies, do good to them that hate 
you,’ He touched the ear of the wounded man, ^ and healed 
him,’ Peter and the rest meanwhile, after this brief flash 
of a carnal courage, forsook their divine Master, and, leav¬ 
ing Him in the hands of his enemies, fled,—the wonder of 
the crowd at that gracious work of the Lord, or the tumult, 
with the darkness of the night, or these both together, 
favouring their escape. 


TUB SECOND MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES 

JOHIS’ xxi. 1-23. 


I T almost seemed as tliough. St. Jolin’s Gospel liad found 
its solemn completion in tlie words (ver. 30, 31) witli 
whicli the preceding chapter ended; so that this chapter 
appears, and probably is, in the exactest sense of the word, 
a postscript, — something which the beloved Apostle, after 
he had made an end, thought it important not to leave un¬ 
told ; which he added, perhaps, at the request of his disci¬ 
ples, who, having often drunk in the story from his lips, 
desired that before his departure he should set it down, 
that the Church might be enriched with it for ever.^ Or, 

' Doubts of tbe authenticity of this chapter were first stirred by Gro- 
tius; he supposed it to have been added, probably after St. John’s death, 
by the Ephesian elders, who had often heard the story from his lips. 
These doubts have little or nothing to warrant them. Unlike another 
really suspicious passage in St. John’s Gospel (viii. 1-11), there is no 
outward evidence against this. Every MS. and early Version possesses 
it, nor was there ever a misgiving about it in antiquity. He therefore, 
and his followers here, Clericus, Semler, Liicke, Schott (Com 7 n. de Indole 
Cap. ulL Ev. Joh. Jen. 1825), Wieseler, De Wette, Baur, can have none 
but internal evidence to urge, evidence frequently deceptive, and always 
inconclusive, but here even weaker than usual. Everywhere we mark 
the hand of the beloved disciple. Not merely is the whole tone of the 
narration his;—for that might very well be, were others reporting what 
he had often told them;—but single phrases and turns of language, un¬ 
observed till we have such motives for observing them, attest his hand. 
He only uses Tif^^piac, OdXanra Tfjg Tif 5 ipid?og (vd. i, 23) for the'lake of 
Galilee; or Traid'ut as a word of address from the teacher to the taught 
(cf. ver. 5 with i John ii. 13,18); iriaZtiv, which occurs twice (ver. 3, xo), 
and on six other occasions in his Gospel, is found only thrice besides in 
the whole New Testament. Again, iXicvut' (ver. 6, ii) is one of his 
words (vi. 44; xii. 32; xviii. 20), being found elsewhere but once. The 
double dprjv (ver. 18) is exclusively St. John’s, occurring twenty-five 


SECOND DRAUGHT OF FISHES. 


481 


if we call Jolin i. 1-14 tlie prologue, this we might style 
the epilogue, of his Gospel. As that set forth what the 
Son of God was before He came from the Father, even so 
this, in mystical and prophetic guise, how He should rule 
in the world after He had returned to the Father. 

‘After these things Jesus shoiveF Himself again to the dis- 
cijples at the sea of Tiberias.^ St. John alone gives to the lake 
this name. His motive no doubt was that so it would 
be more easily recognized by those for whom he especi¬ 
ally wrote—Tiberias, built by Herod Antipas in honour of 
Tiberius, being a city well known to the heathen world. 
On the first occasion of using this name, he marks the 
identity of this lake with the lake of Galilee mentioned by 
the other Evangelists (vi. i) but does not count it neces¬ 
sary to repeat this here. Doubtless there is a significance 
in the words, ‘showed Himself’^ or ‘manifested Himself,^ 
which many long ago observed,—no other than this, that 
his body after the resurrection was only visible by a distinct 
act of his will. From that time the disciples did not, as 
before, s^e Jesus, but Jesus appeared unto, or was seen by, 
them. It is not for nothing that in language of this kind 
all his appearances after the resurrection are related (Mark 
xvi. 12,14; Lukexxiv. 34; Acts xiii. 31; i Cor. xv. 5-8). 
It is the same with angelic and all other manifestations 
of a higher heavenly world. Men do not see them; such 

times in his Gospel, never elsewhere; and so too the appellation of 
Thomas, Qw/iolq 6 Xeyofisvog AiSv/jtog (ver. cf. xi. 16; XX. 24) : compare 
too ver. 19 with xii. 23 and xviii. 32; the use of dfiolojQ (ver. 13) with 
the parallel use at vi. 11. 'O-^dpwp (ver. 9, 10, 13; cf. vi. 9, ii), and 
TraAiv hvrspov (ver. i6; cf. iv. 54), belong only to him; and the 
narrator interposing words of his own, to avert a misconception of words 
epoken by the Lord (ver. 19), is in St. John’s favourite manner (ii. 21; 
vi. 6; vii. 39). And of these peculiarities many more might be 
adduced. 

1 This i(pavepuja{v tavrov of his last miracle St. John intends us to 
bring into relation with the rriu So^av of his first (ii. ii); which 

beino- so, our Version should have preserved, as a hint of this, the ‘ mani¬ 
fested’ which it there employs. Compare too the taunt of vii. 4: <pavi* 
Q(orrov ffsavTov r this He is now doing. 


f82 


THE SECOND MIRACULQUS 


language would be inappropriate; but they appear to men 
(Judg. vi. 12; xiii. 3, 10, 21; Matt. xvii. 3 ; Luke i. ii ; 
xxii. 43 ; Acts ii. 3; vii. 2 ; xvi. 9 ; xxvi. 16); being only 
visible to those for whose sakes they are vouchsafed, and 
to whom they are willing to show themselves.* Those to 
whom this manifestation was vouchsafed are enumerated. 

‘ There were together Simon Deter, and Thomas called Didy- 
mus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee,, and the sons of 
Zehedee, and two other of his disciples, St. John, as is well 
known, has no list of Apostles. This is the nearest ap¬ 
proach to one in his gospel. It makes something for the 
opinion, unknown to antiquity, but yet so probable, and by 
some now accepted as certain, that the Nathanael of St. 
John is the Bartholomew of the other Evangelists, thus to 
find him named not after, but in the midst of, some of the 
chiefest Apostles. Who were the two unnamed disciples 
cannot certainly be known. They could scarcely be other 
than Apostles,—a word, it should be remembered, which 
St. John nowhere uses to distinguish the Twelve, indeed 
uses only once (xiii. 16) in all his writings,—‘ disqiples ’ in 
the most eminent sense of the word. Lightfoot supposes 
that they were Andrew and Philip; which is very likely; for 
where Peter was, there his brother Andrew would scarcely 
be wanting (Matt. iv. 18 ; Mark i. 29 ; Luke vi. 14 ; John vi. 
8 ), and where Andrew there in all likelihood would be Philip 
as well (John i. 45 ; xii. 22 5 Mark iii. 18). In all other lists 
of the Apostles the sons of Zehedee occupy a place imme¬ 
diately after Peter (Mark iii. 16, 17; Acts i. 13), or after 
Peter and Andrew (Matt. x. 2). Here they a-re the last of 

1 Thus Ambrose on the appearing of the Angel to Zacharias (Exp. in 
Luc. i. 24) : Bene apparuisse dicitur ei, qui eum repente conspexit. Et 
hoc specialiter ant de Angelis aut de Deo Scriptura divina tenere con- 

suevit; ut quod non potest pr£evideri, apparere dicatur.Non enim 

similiter sensibilia videntur, et is in cujus voluntate situm est videri, et 
cujus naturae est non videri, voluntatis videri. Nam si non vult, non vi- 
detur: si vult, videtur. And Chrysostom here: 'Ev dirCiv, icpavl-pioatv 
tavrhvf TovTu Sq\c7, on ti fxp rj9e\(, Kal avTog iavTov dta avyKara^aaiv (ctav'f 
poxTiVy ovx ufparo, rov atoparog ovTog dcpOdprov, 



DRAUGHT OF FISHES. 


4S3 


those actually named. This is exactly what we might ex¬ 
pect, if St. John was the author of this Chapter, but it 
would scarcely have otherwise occurred. 

The announcement of Peter, ^ I go a-fishing, not, as 
it has been strangely interpreted, a declaration that he has 
lost all hope in Jesus as the Messiah, has renounced his 
apostleship, and, since now there is no nobler work in store 
for him, will return to his old occupation. A teacher in 
that new kingdom which his Lord had set up, he is follow¬ 
ing the wise rule of the Jewish Eabbis, who were ever wont 
to have some manual trade or occupation on which to fall 
back in time of need. We all know of what good service 
to St. Paul was his skill in making tents, and what inde¬ 
pendence it gave him (2 Thess. iii. 8). Probably too they 
found it healthful to their own minds, to have some out¬ 
ward employment for which to exchange at times their 
spiritual. This challenge of St. Peter to the old compa¬ 
nions of his toil is at once accepted by them : ‘ They say 
unto him, We also go with thee. They went forth, and en¬ 
tered mto a ship immediately; and that night they caught 
nothing.'^ It fared with them now, as it had fared with 
three, or perhaps four, among them on a prior occasion 
(Luke V. 5). Already a dim feeling may have risen up in 
their minds that this night should be a spiritual counter¬ 
part of that other; and as that was followed by a glorious 
day, and by their first installation in their high office as 
^ fishers of men,’ this present ill-success may have helped 
to prepare their spirits for that wondrous glimpse which 
they were now to receive, of what their work, and what its 
reward, should be. Had it been, however, more than the 
obscurest presentiment, they would have been quicker to 
recognize their Lord, when with the early dawn He ^ stood 
on the shorel It was an appropriate time; fox heaviness 
may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the moniing ’ 
(Ps. XXX. 5; cf. xix. 5; cxliii. 8) ; morning is here, as so 


THE SECOND MIRACVLOUS 


^84 

often, tlie type of dawning salvationd Kor was tlie place 
less appropriate; He now on the firm land (it had not been 
so once, Luke V. i-ii), they still on the unquiet sea.® But 
as yet their eyes were holden ; ‘ the disciples Jcnew not that 
it was Jesus’ (cf. xx. 14 ; Luke xxiv. 16); He was to them 
but as a stranger, and in the language of a stranger He 
addressed them; ‘ Children, have ye any meat ? ’ putting 
this question, Chrysostom supposes, as one that would pur¬ 
chase from them of the fruit of their toil: but rather, I 
should imagine, as with that friendly interest, not unmixed 
Wxth curiosity, which almost all take in the result of labours 
proverbially uncertain, being now utterly defeated, now 
crowned with largest success. ‘ They answered Him, No’ 
The question was indeed asked to draw forth this acknow¬ 
ledgment from their lips ; for in small things as in great, 
in natural as in spiritual, it is well that the confessions of 
man’s poverty should go before the incomings of the riches 
of God’s bounty and grace (cf. John v. 6 ; vi. 7-9). 

‘ And He said unto them. Cast the net on the right side of 

^ There is a sublime reaching out after an expression of this in the 
opening of the JEkctra of Sophocles. "With the arrival of Orestes at his 
father’s house, about to purify that house from the hideous stains of 
blood, the long night of the triumphing of the wicked is spent, and the 
day of righteous retribution is at hand. With what consummate skill and 
in what glorious poetry the greatest artist, if not the greatest poet, of 
the ancient world surrounds his arrival with all the signs and tokens of 
the dawning day. Thus 17-19 : 

wf VIMV ySt] \afnrpbv ifKiov aiXctQ 
t(pa Kivd dpv'iOojv aapi], 

piXaivd Taarpojv iKXeXonrsv tixppovr], 

* Gregory the Great {Horn, xxiv.) : Quid enim mare nisi prsesens se- 
culum signat, quod se causarum tuniultibus et undis vitae corruptibilis 
illidit ? Quid per soliditatem littoris, nisi ilia perpetuitas quietis seternae 
figuratur ? Quia ergo discipuli adhuc fluctibus mortalis vitae inerant, in 
mari laborabant. Quia auteni Redemtor noster jam corruptionem carnis 
excesserat, post resurrectionem suam in littore stabat. So too Grotius, 
the occasional depth and beauty of whose annotations have scarcely ob¬ 
tained the credit which they deserve: Significans se per resurrectionem ' 
jam esse in vado, ipsos in salo versari. For Him henceforward there is 
no more sea (Rev. xxi. i). 


DRAUGHT OF FISHES. 


485 


the sliijpf and ye shall Jind,^ They take tlie counsel as of 
one possibly more skilful than themselves ; ‘ They cast there¬ 
fore, and now they were not ahle to draw it for the multitude 
of fishes.^ But this is enough; there is one disciple at 
least, ‘ that disciple whom Jesus loved,^ who can no longer 
doubt with whom they have to do. That other occasion, 
when at the bidding of their future Lord they enclosed so 
vast a multitude of fishes that their net brake, rose clear 
before his eyes (Luke v. i-ii). It is the same Lord in 
whose presence now they stand. And he says, not yet to 
all, but to Peter, to him with whom he stood in nearest 
fellowship (John xx. 3 ; Acts iii. i), who had best right to 
be first made partaker of the discovery, ^ It is the Lord! 
Each Apostle comes wonderfully out in his proper charac¬ 
ter J he of the eagle eye first detects the presence of the 
Beloved; and then Peter, the foremost ever in act, as 
John is profoundest in speculation, unable to wait till the 
ship shall touch the land, casts himself into the sea, that 
he may find himself the sooner at his Saviour’s feet (Matt, 
xiv. 28; John XX. 6). He was before ‘ naTced,^ stripped, 
that is, for labour, wearing only the tunic, or garment 
close to the skin, and having put ofi* his upper and super- 
fiuous garments; for ^ naked ’ means no more. How, 

* Chrysostom: 'Qf is iTrlynorrav avrby, iraXiv ra IhuJixaTu Ttuti oIkhgjv 
tTndnKvvvrai rpoTTcjn oi fjaf'rjrai UsTpoc koI ’laiui'Vtjg’ u p'tv yap Oipporepog, 
b be vipriXorepng rjv' Kai 6 pev o^urepog b Se diopariKMTepog. Tristram 
(^Natural History of the Bihle, p. 285) : ^ The density of the shoals of fish 
in the sea of Galilee can scarcely be conceived by those who have not 
witnessed them.’ 

2 Thus Virgil': Nudus ara (cf. Matt. xxiv. 18), following Hesiod, who 
Olds the husbandman yvpvbv cnrtlpew, yvpvbv re jSoujTflv. Cincinnatus was 
found ‘ naked ’ at the plough, when called to he Dictator, and sent for 
his toga that he might appear before the Senate (Pliny, H. N. xviii. 4); 
and Plutarch says of Phocion, that, in the country and with the army, 
he went always unshod and ^ naked ’ (dwTroSnrog del kuI yvpvog ifddbi'Cev) : 
while Grotius quotes from Eusebius a yet apter passage, in which one 
lays, TjpTjv yvpvbg iv T(p Xivtp ecfOijpaTj, The Athenian jest that the 
Spartans showed to foreigners their virgins ^naked’ must be taken in 
the same sense,—with only the chiton or himation (Muller, Dorimis, 
iv, 2, 3)., Cf. I Sam. xix. 245 Isai. xx. 3 ; at which last passage the 


4.86 


THE SECOND MIRACULOUS 


however, he girded himself with his fisher’s coat,^ as count¬ 
ing it unseemly to appear without it in the presence of 
his Lord .2 Some suppose that he walked on the sea; 
but we have no right to multiply miracles, and the words, 

* cast himself into the sea,’ do not warrant this. Rather, he 
swam and waded to the shore,® which was not distant 
more than about ‘ two hundred cubits,’ ^ that is, about one 
hundred yards. The other disciples followed more slowly; 
tor they were encumbered with the net and its weight of 
fishes. This, having renounced the hope of lifting it into 
the boat, they dragged ® after them in the water, toward 
the land. ‘As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a 
fire of coals, and fish laid thereon, and bread ’ —by what 
ministry, natural or miraculous, has been often inquired ; 
but we must leave this undetermined as we find it. 

Deist Tindal ignorantly scoffs, as thougli God had commanded an inde¬ 
cency (see Deyling, Ohss. Sac. vol. iv. p. 888, seq., the Diet, of Gr. and 
Rom. Antt. s. v. Nudiis; and Tristram, Natural History of the Rible, 
p. 290. 

^ Deyling: ’ETTfvSvrrjv ad Christum iturus sibi circumjiciehat,ne minus 
honestus et modestus in conspectum Domini veniret. Others, as Euthy- 
miiis and Lampe, suppose this lirfvdvrrjg was the only garment which he 
had on; that even as regarded that, he was d^woroc, and so, in a manner, 
yvyro^': hut going to the 'Lord, he girt it up; whether for comeliness, or 
that it might not hinder him in swimming. The matter would be clear, 
if we knew certainly what the tTrei^Sirrig was;—plainly no under garment 
or vest, worn close to the skin, vTroSrrrig (see Passow, s. vv.); but rather 
that worn over all, as the robe which Jonathan gives to David is called 
TOP tTnvSvTTjv rbv iirdvu) (i Sam, xviii. 4). This is certainly the simplest 
explanation; that Peter, being stripped before, now hastily threw his 
upper garment over him, which yet he girt up, that it might not prove 
an impediment in swimming. 

2 Ambrose: Immemor periculi, non tamen immemor reverentise. 

^ Id,: Periculoso compendio religiosum maturavit obsequium. 

^ Ovid’s advice to the fisher is to keep this moderate distance: 

Nec tamen in medias pelagi te pergere sedes 

Admoneam, vastique maris tentare profundum. 

Inter utrumque loci melius moderabere finem, &c. 

^ Observe St. John’s accurate distinction in the use of (rvpHv here, and 
iXKvtiv at ver. 6, 11 ; this being to draw to you (ziehen, De Wette) ; 
that, to drag after you (nachschleppen) : see my Synonynis of the Nenat 
Tcdament, § 21 . 


T>nAUGHT OF FTSEES. 


487 

^ Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now 
caiiqhtj These shall be added to those already preparing.^ 
Peter, again the foremost, ‘went up and drew the net to 
land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three ; ’ 
while yet, setting a notable difference between this and a 
similar event of an earlier day (Lnke v. 6), ‘for all there 
were so many, yet was not the net hrohen.’ 

It is hard to believe that all this should have happened, 
or be recorded with this emphasis and minuteness of detail, 
had it no other meaning than that which is ostensible and 
on the surface. There must be more here than meets the 
eye—an allegorical, or more truly a symbolic, meaning 
underlying the literal. Nor is this very hard to discover. 
Without pledging oneself for every detail of Augustine’s 
interpretation,^ it yet commends itself as in the main 
worthy of acceptance. He puts this miraculous draught 
of fishes in relations of likeness and unlikeness with the 
other before the resurrection (Luke v. i-ii), and sees in 
that earlier, the figure of the Church as it now is, and as 
it now gathers its members from the world; in this later 
the figure of the Church as it shall be in the end of the 
world, with the large incoming and sea-harvest of souls, 
‘ the fulness of the Gentiles ’ which then shall find place.^ 

1 To tie abundance and excellency of the fisb in this lake many bear 
testimony. Thus Kobinson {Biblical Researches, vol. ii. p. a6i) : ^The 
lake is full of fishes of various kinds,’ and he instances sturgeon, chub, 
and bream; adding, ^we had no difficulty in procuring an abundant 
supply for our evening and morning meal; and found them delicate and 
well-flavoured.’ 

2 Augustine {Serm. ccxlviii. i): Nunquam hoc Dominus juberet, nisi 
aliquid significare vellet, quod nobis nosse expediret. Quid ergo pro 
magno potuit ad Jesum Christum pertinere, si pisoes caperentur aut si 
non caperentur ? Sed ilia piscatio, nostra erat significatio. 

» Augustine (In Ei\ Joh. tract, cxxii.) : Sicut hoc loco qualiter in seculi 
fine futura sit [Ecclesia], ita Dominus alia piscatione significavit Eccle- 
siam qualiter nunc sit. Quod autem illud fecit in initio prsedicationis 
suae, hoc vero post resurrectionem suam, bine ostendit illam capturam 
piscium, bonos et malos significare, quos nunc habet Ecclesia; istam vero 
tantummodo bonos quos habebit in aBternum, completa in fine hujus 
geculi resurrectione mortuorum. Denique ibi Jesus, non sicut hie in lit-* 


Till!) SECOND MIRACULOUS 


48S 

On that first occasion the ‘ fishers of men ’ that should I)e, 3 

were not particularly hidden to cast the net on the right 'J 

hand or on the left; for, had Christ said to the right, it 
would have implied that none should he taken hut the 
good,—if to the left, that only the had; while yet, so long 
as the present confusions endure, both had and good are ?! 

enclosed in the nets ; hut now He says, ^ Cast the net on the 3 

right side of the ship’ implying that all which are taken | 

should he good; and this, because the right is ever the 
hand of value. Thus the sheep are placed at the right j 

hand (Matt. xxv. 33) ; the right eye, if need he, shall he j 

plucked out, the right hand cut off (Matt. v. 29, 30); the 
right eye of the idol shepherd, the eye of spiritual under¬ 
standing, shall be utterly darkened'(Zech. xi. 17). Ezekiel 
lies on his left side for Israel, hut on his right for Judah 
(Ezek. iv. 4, 6); which, with all its sins, has not yet been 
rejected (cf. Hos. xi. 12; Gen. xlviii. 17; i Kin. ii. 19; 
Acts vii. 55). Then the nets were broken with the multi¬ 
tude of fishes, so that all were not secured which once were 
within them ;—and what are the schisms and divisions of 
the present condition of the Church, hut rents and holes 
through which numbers, that impatiently hear the re¬ 
straints of the net, break away from it ?—hut now, in the 
end of time, ^for all there were so many, yet was not the 7iet 

tore stabat, quando jussit pisces capi, sed ascendens in unam navim . . . 
dixit ad Simoneni, Due in altum, et laxate retia vestra in capturam. ... 

Ibi retia non mittuntur in dexteram, ne solos significent bonos, nec in 
siuistram, ne solos malos; sed indifFerenter, Laxate, inquit, retia vestra 
in capturam, ut permixtos intelligamus bonos et malos: Me autem inquit, 
Mittite in dexteram navigii rete, ut significaret eos qui stabant ad dexte¬ 
ram, solos bonos. Ibi rete propter significanda scliismata rumpebatur ; 
hie vero, quoniam ti^nc jam in ilia summa pace sanctorum nulla erimt 
pcbismata, pertinuit ad Evangelistam dicere, Et cum tanti essent, id est, 
tarn magni, non est scissum rete; tanquam illud respiceret ubi scissum 
est, et in illius mali comparatione commendaret hoc bonum. Cf. Serm. 
ccxlviii.-cclii.; Rrev. Coll, con. Donat. 3 ; Queest. 83, qu. 8 ; and Gregory 
the Great {Horn, in Evang. 24), who, following the exposition of Augus- j 
tine, yet makes far more of Peter’s part, especially of his bringing of the J 
net to land, all which may easily be accounted for, the idea of the Papaev M 
having in his time developed itself much further. ^ 


rf It AUGHT OF FISHES. 


489 

Vrolcen.'^ ^ On that first occasion the fish were brought 
into the ship, itself still tossed on the unquiet sea, even 
as men in the present time who are taken for Christ are 
brought into the Church, itself not in haven yet; but here 
the nets are drawn up to land, to the safe and quiet shore 
of eternity.^ Then the ships were wellnigh sunken with 
their burden, for so is it with the ship of the Church,— 
encumbered with evil-livers till it wellnigh makes ship¬ 
wreck altogether; but no danger of this kind threatens 
here.® There a great but indefinite multitude was enclosed; 
but here a definite number, even as the number of the elect 
is fixed and pre-ordained; ^ and there small fishes and 
great, for nothing to the contrary is said; but here they 
are all ‘ great, ^ for all shall be such who attain to that 
kingdom, being equal to the Angels.® 

1 O^K- Already in the apostolic times nxicrua was the technical 

term for the spiritual rents in the Church; thus see i Cor. i. 10; xi. 18 ; 
xii. 25. 

* Augustine (Serm. ccli. 3): In ilia piscatione non ad littus adtracta 
sunt retia: sed ipsi pieces qui capti sunt, in naviculas fusi sunt. Hie 
autem traxerunt ad littus. Spera finem seculi. Cf. Gregory the Great, 
Hum. xxiv. tn Evang. 

^ Augustine (^Serm. eexlix.) : Implentur navigia duo propter populos 
duos de circumcisione et praeputio: et sic implentur, ut premantur, et 
pene mergantur. Hoc quod significat gemendum est. Turha turbavit 
Ecclesiam. Quam magnum numerum fecerunt male viventes, prementes 
et gemmtes [pene mergentes ?]. Sed propter pisces bonos non sunt mersa 
navigia. 

^ Augustine and others enter into laborious calculations to show why 
the fishes were exactly one hundred and fifty-three, and the mystery of 
this number; while Hengstenberg believes that the hey to the explana¬ 
tion is to be found at z Chron. ii. 17. But the significance is not in that 
particular number, which seems chosen to exclude this, herein unlike the 
hundred and forty-four thousand (12X12) of the Apocalypse (vii. 4); 
but in its being a fixed and definite number at all: j ust as in Ezekiel’s 
temple (ch. xl. seq.) each measurement is not, and cannot be made, sig¬ 
nificant ; but that all is by measurement is most significant; for thus we 
are taught that in the rearing of the spiritual temple no caprice or wi’i- 
fulness of men may find room, but that all is laid down according to a 
pre-ordained purpose and will of God. To number, as to measure and to 
weigh, is a Divine attribute: cf. Job xxviii. 25 ; xxxviii. 5 ; Isai. xl. 12; 
and the noble debate in St. Augustine {De Lih. Arhit. ii. 11-16) on a^l 
the works of wisdom being by number. 

^ Augustme {Serm. ccxlviii. 3) : Quis est enim ibitunc parvus, quando 
erunt mquales Angelis Dei ? 


490 


THE SECOND Mill AC CLOUS 


‘ Jesus saith unto them, Gome and dine. And none of the 
disciples durst ash Him, Who art Thou ? knowing that it was 
the Lord,’ But if they knew, why should they desire to 
ask ? I take the E^rangelist to imply that they would 
gladly have obtained from his own lips an avowal that it 
was Himself and no other; yet they did not venture to put 
the question—it seemed to them so much too bold and 
familiar—which would have drawn this avowal from Him. 
They knew ^ that it was the Lord ; ’ yet would they willingly 
have had this assurance sealed and made yet more certain 
to them by his own word, which for all this they shrunk 
from seeking to obtain, so majestic and awe-inspiring was 
his presence now ^ (cf. iv. 27). 

That which follows is obscure, and without the key 
which the symbolical explanation supplies, would be 
obscurer yet. What is the meaning of this meal which 
they found ready prepared for them on the shore, and 
which the Lord with his own hands distributed to them ? 
For Himself with his risen body, it was superfluous, nor 
does He seem to have shared, but only to have dealt to 
them, the food; as little was it needed by them, whose 
dwellings were near at hand ; while indeed a single loaf, 
or flat cake, and a single fish, would have proved a scanty 
meal for the seven. But we must continue to see an 
under-meaning, and a rich and deep one, in all this. As 
that large capture of fish was to them the pledge and 
promise of a labour that should not be in vain,* so the 

^ Augustine does not seem to me to Lave quite hit it {In Ev, Joh. 
tract, cxxiii.) : Si ergo sciebant, quid opus erat ut interrogarent ? Si 
autem non opus erat, quare dictum est, non audebant; quasi opus esset, 
sed timore aliquo non auderent ? Sensus ergo hie est: Tanta erat eviden- 
tia veritatis, qua Jesus illis discipulis apparebat, ut eorum non solum 
negare, sed nec dubitare quidem ullus auderet: quoniam si quisquam 
dubitaret, utique interrogare deberet. Sic ergo dictum est, Nemo audebat 
eum interrogare, Tu quis es ? ac si diceretur, Nemo audebat dubitare quod 
ipse esset. Cf. Chrysostom, In Joh. Horn. Ixxxvii. 

* Maldonatus: Missurus erat paulo post Christus discipulos suos in 
omdorn terrarum orbem, quasi in altum ac latum mare, ut homines pisca- 


nnAUGHT OF FISHES, 


491 

meal, when the labour was done, a meal of the liord’s own 
preparing* and dispensing, and ^ upon the shoi'e/ was the 
symbol of the great festival in heaven with which, after 
their earthly toil was over. He would refresh his servants, 
when He should cause them to sit down with Abraham 
and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom (Matt. xxii. i; xxv. 
20; Lukexih 37; xxii. 30; Eev. vii. 17; xix. 9). The 
character of the meal was sacramental, and it had nothing 
to do with the stilling of their present hunger.^ 

The most interesting conversation which follows hangs 
too closely upon this miracle to be past over. Christ has 
given to his servants a prophetic glimpse of their work 
and their reward; and He now declares to them the sole 
conditions under which this work may be accomplished, 
and this reward inherited. Love to Him, and the unre¬ 
served yielding up of self to God—these are the sole 
conditions, and all which follows is to teach this ; thus the 
two portions of the chapter constitute together a perfect 
whole. ‘So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon 
Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me more tha,n these ? ’ ^ 

In that compellation, ‘ Simon, son of Jonas,’ there was 

# 

rentur. Poterant inscitiam, poterant imbecillitatem suam exciisare, se 
homines esse litteramm rudes, id est, piscandi imperitos, paucos praeterea 
et infirmos, qui posse se tot tamque grandes pisces capere, tot oratores, 
tot tantosque philosophos irretire et a sententia dimovere ? Voluit ergo 
Christus exemplo artis propriae docere id ipsos suis viribus su^ue indu- 
stria facere nullo modo posse, idque significat quod totam laborantes noc- 
tem nihil ceperant; ipsius vero ope atque auxilio facillime facturos. 

^ Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, cxxiii.): Piscis assus, Christus est pas- 
sus. Ipse est et panis qui de caelo descendit. Hinc incorporatur Eccleoia 
ad participandam beatitudinem sempiternam. Ammonius: To, Ators 
apirsTtvauTtf aipiypa o \6yoc, oti ptra tovq ttovovq diadt^trai rovg ayinv^ 
dvdiravTig Kai Tpv^ij Kai dTroXavmg. Gregory the Great (Horn. xxiv. in 
Evang.) notes how the number who here feast with the Lord are seven, 
the number of perfection and completion. 

2 nAt/oi/ TovTtav, This might mean, and Whitby affirms that it does 
mean,—‘more than thou lovest these things, thy nets and thy boat and 
other worldly gear.’ But the words, so understood, yield a sense so 
trivial and unworthy, as to render it impossible that this can bo the 
Lord’s mearing. 


THE SECOND MIBACULOUS 


f 92 

already that which must have wrung the Apostle’s heart. 
It was as though his Lord would say to him, ‘ Where is 
that name Peter, which I gave thee (Matt. xvi. i8 ; John 
i. 42) ? where is the Eock, and the rock-like strength, 
which, when most needed, I looked for in vain (Matt. xxvi. 
69-75)? not therefore by that name can I address thee now, 
but as flesh and blood, and the child of man; for all that 
was higher in thee has disappeared.’ ^ In the question 
itself lies a plain allusion to Peter’s vainglorious word, 
not recorded by this Evangelist, ' Though all men shall be 
offended because of Thee, yet will I never be offended’ 
(Matt. xxvi. 33); though Hengstenberg in his self-confident 
way denies, in the face of all expositors of all times, that 
there is here any reference to that former boast of his. 
Peter felt that there was so, and no longer casting any 
slight by comparison on the love of his fellow-disciples, is 
satisfied with afiirmiiig his own,^ appealing at the same 
time to the Lord, the searcher of all hearts, whether, de¬ 
spite of all that miserable backsliding in the palace of the 
High Priest, this love of his was not fervent and true. * He 
saith unto Him, Yea, Lord, Thou hnowest that I love Thee * 
The Lord’s rejoinder, ^ Feed my sheep* ^ Feed my lambs,* is 
not so much, ^ Show then thy love in act,’ as rather, ‘ I 
restore to thee thy apostolic function ; this grace is thine, 
that thou shalt yet be a chief shepherd of my flock.’ ® It 

^ We read in The Modern Syrians, p. 304, of one of the Caliphs that 
‘he nsed to give his principal officers an honourable sirname suited to 
their qualities. When he wished to show his dissatisfaction, he used to 
drop it, calling them by their own names; this caused them great alarm. 
When he resumed the employment of the sirname, it was a sign of their 
return to favour.^ 

* Augustine {Se^'m. cxlvii. 2): Non potuit dicere nisi, Amo te: non 
ausus est dicere, plus his. Noluit iterum esse mendax. Suffecerat ei 
testimonium perhibere cordi suo: non debuit esse judex cordis alieni. 

2 In the other way the words are more commonly understood; thus 
by Augustine a hundred times, as Serm. cxlvi. i; Tamquam et diceret, 
A mas me? In hoc ostende quia amas me, Pasce oves meas. But Cyril, 
Chrysostom, Euthymius, are with me. Thus, too, Calvin: Nunc iUi tarn 
lihertas docendi quam auctoritas restituitur, quarum utramque amiserat 
8 ua culpa. 


mAUGBT OF FISHES. 


493 


implies, therefore, the fullest forgiveness of the past, since 
none but the forgiven could rightlj declare the forgiveness 
of God. The question, ' Lovest thou Me f ^ is thrice 
repeated, that by three solemn affirmations he may efface 
his three denials of his Lord^ (John xviii. 17 ; xxv. 27). 
At last, upon the third repetition of the question, ^ Fetef 
ivas grieved ; ’ and with yet more emphasis than before 

^ When the Lord first puts the question to Peter, it is aya-naQ [xf; 
Peter changes the word, and replies, <pi \oj aa (ver. 1,5); a second time 
dyoTTr^g appears in the Lord’s question, and (ptXiv in Peter’s reply (ver. 16); 
till on the third occasion Jesus, leaving aya-w^c, asks the question in 
Peter's own word, qiXaiQ fia) on which Peter for the third time replies, 
na (ver. 17). There is nothing accidental here, as is plain from the 
relation in which d/andv and (^tXtTr stand to one another. They differ 
very nearly as diligere and amare in Latin (see Doderlein, Lot. Synon. 
vol. iv. p. 89, seq.; and my Synonyms of the Nexo Testament, § 12); the 
Vulgate marking by help of these Latin equivalents the alternation of the 
words. 'Ayandv (=diligere=:deligere) has more of judgment and de¬ 
liberate choice; (piXalv (=amare) of attachment and special personal 
affection. Thus dyairac on the lips of the Lord seems to Peter too cold 
a word ; as though his Lord were keeping him at a distance; or at least 
not inviting him to draw as near as in the passionate yearning of his 
neart he desired now to do. Therefore, putting this by, he substitutes 
<pCKQ} in its room. A second time he does the same. And now he has 
conquered; for when the Lord demands a third time whether he loves 
Him, He employs the word which alone will satisfy Peter, which alone 
expresses that personal affection with which his heart is full. Ambrose, 
though not expressing himself very happily, has a right insight into the 
matter {Exy. in Luc. x. 176): Illud quod diligentius intuendum, cur cum 
Dominus dixerit, Diligis me? ille respondent: Tu scis, Domine, quia 
amo te. In quo videtur mihi dilectio habere animi caritatem, amor quen- 
dam oestum conceptum corporis ac mentis ardore, et Petrum opinor non 
eoluni animi, sed etiam corporis sui signare flagrantiam. 

2 Augustine {In Ev. Joh. tract, cxxiii.): Kedditur negationi trinae 
trina confessio; ne minus amori lingua serviat quam timori: et plus 
vocis elicuisse videatur mors imminens, quam vita praesens. Enarr. in 
Ps. xxxvii. 13 : Donee trina voce amoris solveret trinam vocem negatio- 
nis. Serm. cclxxxv.: Odit Dens praesumtores de viribus suis; et tumo- 
rem istum in eis, quos diligit, tamquam medicus secat. Secando quidem 
intert dolorem; sed firmat postea sanitatem. Itaque resurgens Dominus 
commendat Petro oves suas illi negatori; sed negatori quia prsesumtori, 
postea pastori quia amatori. Nam quare ter interrogat amantem, nisi ut 
compungat ter negantem ? Serm. ccxcv. 4: Ter vincat in amore eonies- 
eio, quia ter victa est in timore prsesumtio. Cf. Enarr. ii. in Ps. xc. iz. 
80 Cyril, Chrysostom, Epiphanius, Apollinaris, and Ammonius: Aid rpiuiv 
ruiv ipioTtjaewv Kai KaTaQaamv i^aXairju rac rptlg (^ojvaQ rrjg dprrjaaMCj Kai vid 


f94 


THE SECOND MIRACULOUS 


appeals to the omniscience of his Lord, whether it was not 
true that indeed he loved Him: ^ Lord, Thou Ttnowest all 
things ; ’—confessing this, he confesses to his Godhead, for 
of no other but God could this knowledge of the hearts of 
all men be predicated (Ps. vii. 9; cxxxix.; Ezek. xi. 5 ; 
Jer. xvii. 10; i Kin. viii. 39; John ii. 24, 25; xvi. 30; 
Acts i. 24); and from this point of view the title ‘ Lord,^ 
which he ascribes to his Master, assumes a new signifi¬ 
cance;— ‘Thou hnowest that I love Theed ^ 

Many have refused to see any distinction between the 
two commissions, ‘ Feed my sheep’ and ‘Feed my lambs.’ ^ 
To me nothing seems more natural than that by ‘ lambs ’ 
the Lord intended the more imperfect Christians, the 
‘ little children ’ in Him (Isai. xl. 11); by the ‘ sheep ’ the 

Xoyair eTrai>op 9 ol to. fv \ 6 yoic yeioi^ieva TTrairryiaTa, Not otherwise the 
Church hyum: 

Ter confesses ter negatum, 

Gregera pascis ter donatum, 

Vita, verbo, precibiis. 

* Augustine (Senn. ccliii. i): Oontristatus est Petrus. Quid contri- 
staris, Petre, quia ter respondes amoreni ? Oblitus es trinum timorem ? 
Sine interroget te Doniinus: medicus est qui te interrogat, ad sanitatem 
pertinet, quod interrogat. Noli taedio atFici. Expecta, impleatur numerus 
dilectionis, ut deleat numerum negationis. 

* The received text makes the order in Christ’s threefold commission 
to Peter, to be as follows: dovia (ver. 15), -n-pofSara (ver. 16), and again 
TTpojSara (ver. 17). Tischendorf, on the authority of A C, for the last 
TrpnjSaTa reads Ttpo^dria, which word, never else occurring in the New 
Testament, nor yet in the Septuagint, would scarcely have found its way 
without just cause into the text. At the same time dpvla, TrpoiSaTa, Trpo- 
pdrin, fail altogether in this order to make a climax; and one is tempted 
to suspect that npojidTia and vpojSuTa should change places; all then 
would follow excellently well. Pemarkably confirming this conjecture, 
first made, I believe, by Bellarmine, St. Ambrose {Exp. in Luc. x. 176), 
expounding this text, uses his Latin equivalents exactly in this order; 
first agnos (=dpvia), then oviculas {=^npoj 3 drio), and lastly oves (—npo- 
f 5 tT(t '): nor is this an accident, but he makes a point of this ascending scale, 
saying on that third injunction, ‘Feed my sheep:' Et jam non agnos, nec 
oviculas, sed oves pascere jubetur. We further note that the Vulgate has 
not one agnos and two oves, which would correspond to our received 
reading, but two agnos and one oves, which is much nearer that which 
is conjectured. In the Peschito, justly celebrated for its verbal accuracy, 
there is a difierence exactly answering to Ambrose’s agnos, oviculas, and 
oTiea. 


DRAUGHT OF FISIIFJS, 


493 


more advanced, tlie ‘young men’ and ‘fathers’ ‘ (i John 
ii. 12-14). The interpretation indeed is groundless and 
trifling, made in the interests of Rome, which sees in the 
‘ lambs ’ the laity, and in the ‘ sheep ’ the clergy; and 
that here to Peter, and in him to the Roman pontiffs, was 
given dominion over both. The commission should at 
least have run, ‘ Feed my sheep,^ ‘ Feed my shepherds,"* if 
any such conclusions were to be drawn from it, though 
many and huge links in the chain of proofs would be 
wanting still.^ 

But ‘ Feed my sheep ’ is not all. This life of labour is to 
be crowned with a death of painfulness; such is the way, 
with its narrow and strait gate, which even for a chief 
Apostle is the only one which leads to eternal life. The 
Lord will show him beforehand what great things he must 
suffer for his sake; as is often his manner with his elect 
servants, with an Ezekiel (iii. 25), with a Paul (Acts xxi. 
11), and now with a Peter. ‘ When thou wast young, thou 
girdedst thyself, and walhedst whither thou wouldest; hut 
when thou shalt he old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and 
another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest 
noV ® A prophetic allusion is here made to the crucifixion 
of Peter, St. John himself declaring that Jesus spake thus, 
* signifying hy what death he should glorify God ’ (cf. John xii. 
33 ; and i Pet. iv. 16, in which last passage we cannot fail 
to recognize a reminiscence of these words); and no reason¬ 
able grounds exist for calling in question the tradition of 

1 Wetstein: Oves ists© quo tempore Petro committebantur, erant 
adhuc teneri agni, novitii discipuli a Petro ex Judseis et gentibus addu- 
cendi. Quando vero etiam oves committit, significat eum ad senectutem 
victurum, et ecclesiam constitutam et ordinatam visurum esse. 

2 See Bernard, De Consid. ii. 8; and a curious letter of Pope Innocent 
{Fpp. ii. Bp. 209) on tbe whole series of passages in Scripture, and this 
among tbe number, on which the claims of Romish supremacy rest: the 
series begins very early, namely with Gen. i. 16. 

® Instead of the words dWoq litan m, k. t. X., the Codex Sinaiticus has 
this remarkable variation, dXXoi i^djcrovaiv a, Kal iroiiiaovaitf aoi baa oit 
0k\fie, 


THE SECOND MIRACULOUS 


496 

fclie Churcli, that such was the manner of Peter’s martyr¬ 
dom.^ Doubtless it is here obscurely intimated; ^ hut this 
in the very nature of prophecy, and there is quite enough 
in the description to show that the Lord had this and no 
other manner of death in his eye. The stretched-forth 
hands are the hands extended on the transverse bar of the 
cross.® The girdir g by another is the binding to the 
cross, the sufferer being not only fastened to the instru¬ 
ment of punishment with nails, but also bound to it with 
cords.'* It cannot be meant by the bearing ‘ whither thou 
wouldest not,* that there should be any reluctancy on the 
part of Peter to glorify God by his death, except indeed 
the reluctancy which there always is in the flesh to suffer¬ 
ing and pain (Ephes. v. 29); a reluctancy in his case, as in 
his Lord’s (cf. Matt. xxvi. 39), overruled by the higher 
willingness to do and to suffer the perfect will of God. In 
this sense, as it was a violent death,—a death which others 

^ Eusebius, Hist. Led. ii. 25; iii. i. 

^ Bleek {Beitrdge zur Evang. Kritik, p. 237) thinks the adaptation of 
these words to the death by crucifixion altogether forced and artificial, 
and proposes quite another interpretation of them ; but one w^hich will 
scarcely commend itself even to those who find the commonly received 
not wholly satisfactory. 

^ Theophylact: Triv errl rov aravpav tKTaaiv Knl ra ^errfid The 

passages most to the point as showing that this would be an image which 
one who, without naming, yet wished to indicate, crucifixion, would use, 
are these: Seneca (^Consol, ad Mardam, 20): Video istic cruces non 
unius quidein generis; . . . . alii brachia patibulo explicuerunt; Tertul- 
lian {De Pudio. 22) : In patibulo jam corpore expanse; and again, with 
allusion to the stretching out of the hands in prayer; Paratus est ad 
omne supplicium ipse habitus orantis Christiani: Arrian {Epidetus, iii. 
26): ’EiCTtiva^ (Tsavrui^, o)g oi iaTavpojptvoi, The passage adduced from 
Plautus, 

Credo ego tibi esse eundum extra portam, 

Dispessis manibus patibulum quum habebis, 

is not quite satisfying; being probably an allusion to the marchihg of 
the criminal along, with his arms attached to the fork upon his neck, 
before he was himself fastened to the cross (see Becker, Callus, vol. i. 
p. 131; and Wetstein, in loc.). 

^ So Tertullian (Scorp. 15) : Tunc Petrus ab altero cingitur, eumcruci 
ast ringitur; or it may be, as Liicke suggests, the girding the suiferer 
round the middle, who otherwise would be wholly naked on the cross; 
he quotes from the Evang, Nicod. 10 : ’E^eSverav 01 arpaTiUjrai tov ’lr]< 7 o^v rd 
i/inrii o/’-oi', Kci\ TTfpd^uxTav avT<h^ Xevr'a^, 



DRAUGHT OF FISHES. 


497 


chose for him,—a death from which flesh and blood would 
naturally shrink, it was a carrying ‘ whither he would not;’^ 
though, in a higher sense, as it was the way to a nearer 
vision of God, it was that toward which he had all his life 
been striving; and then he was borne whither most he 
would; and no word here implies that the exulting ex¬ 
clamation of another Apostle, at the near approach of his 
martyrdom (2 Tim. iv. 6-8; cf. Phil. i. 21, 23), would not 
have suited his lips just as well.^ It is to this prophetic 
intimation of his death that St. Peter probably alludes 
in his second Epistle (i. 14). 

The symbolical meaning which we have found in the 
earlier portions of the chapter must not be excluded from 
this. To ^ gird oneself’ is ever in Scripture the sign and 
figure of promptness for an outward activity (Exod. xii. 11; 
2 Kin. iv. 29 ; Luke xii. 35 ; xvii. 8 ; Acts xii. 8 ; i Pet. i. 
13 ; Ephes. vi. 14) ; so that, in fact, Christ is saying to 
Peter, When thou wert young, thou actedat for Me; 
going whither thou wouldest, thou wert free to work for Me, 
and to choose thy field of work. But when thou art old, 
thou shalt learn another, a higher and a harder lesson; 
thou shalt suffer for Me; thou shalt no more choose thy 
work, but others shall choose it for thee, and that work 
shall be the work of passion rather than of action.’ Such 
is the history of the Christian life, and not in Peter’s case 
only, but the course and order of it in almost all of God’s 
servants. It is begun in action, it is perfected in suffering. 
In the last, lessons are learned which the first could never 
have taught; graces exercised, which else would not at all, 

' Chrysostom (In Joh. Horn. 88 ): "Ottou oh OiXuQ’ rrjs (pixribjg Xsyei to 
ffVfiTTaOeg Kai Trig aapicog rtjv avayKrjVy Kal on aKOvaa diroppriyvvrat too 

aihpuTog rj rpvxr)- Cf. Augustine's beautiful words, Sei'm. ccxcix., and 
Serm. clxxiii. 2: Quis enim vult mori? Prorsus nemo : et ita nemo ut 
beato Petro diceretur, Alter te cinget, et feret quo tu non vis. 

® Guilliaud: Carni mors nunquam adlubescit, et nolle mori carni cog- 
natum est. Hoc nolle Christus in humeros suos transtulit ut vinceret. 
Quare ut Christus hoc nolle in se vicit (ut in came nostra maneat aliquod 
vestigium), ita per fidem victoria in nos transfertur. 


4-98 


THE SECOND MIRACULOUS 


or would only liave very weakly, existed. Thus was it, for 
instance, with a John Baptist. He begins with Jerusalem 
and all Judjea flowing to him to listen to his preaching ; 
he ends with lying long, a seemingly forgotten captive, in 
the dungeon of Machserus. So was it with a St. Chrysostom. 
The chief cities of Asia and Europe, Antioch and Constan¬ 
tinople, wait upon him with reverence and homage while 
he is young, and he goes whither he would; but when he 
is old, he is borne up and down, whither he would not, a 
sick and suffering exile. Thus should it be also with this 
great Apostle. It was only in this manner that whatever of 
self-will and self-choosing survived in him still, should be 
broken and abolished, that he should be brought into an 
entire emptiness of self, a perfect submission to the will of 
God.i 

He who has shown him the end, will also show him the 
way; for ‘ when lie had spohen this, He saith unto him, 
Follow Me.’ These words signify much more than in a 
general way, ^ Be thou an imitator of Me.’ The scene at 
this time enacted on the shores of Gennesaret, was quite 
as much in deed as in word ; and here, at the very moment 
that the Lord spake the words, it would seem that He took 

^ In this view the passage was a very favourite one with the mystic 
writers. Thus Thauler {Hoinil. p. 176) : Sic et nohiscum agit Dominus 
Deus noster. In conversionis nostrae primordiis amoris sui igne suavis- 
simo nos inflammahat, dulcedinem suam crebro nos sentire faciebat, 
adeoque muneribus gratise suae nostrum trahebat voluntatem, ut quicquid 
volebat ipse optatissimum erat voluntati nostrae. At nunc aliter se res 
habet; alia nunc nobis via gradiendum est. Vult namque Deus ut pro- 
priam voluntatem nostrum et nosipsos, licet ipsa voluntas renitatur pluri- 
mum, penitus abnegemus, et ipsum Dominum Deum nostrum in his quae 
dura nobis et adversa sinit occurrere, et in ea quam nobis exhibet 
austeritate atque rigore, in omni denique eventu etiam contra voluntatem 
sensualitatis nostrae, sponte ac toto afFectu suscipiamus. Hoc est quod 
idem ipse olim suo discipulo et Apostolorum principi ait. Cum esses, in¬ 
quit, junior, cingebas te, et ambulabas quo volebas. Cum autem senueris, 
alius te cinget, et ducet quo tu non vis. . . . Yult, inquam, ut velle et 
nolle cesset in nobis, ut sive det, sive auferat, sive abundemus, sive penu- 
riam sentiamus, perinde sit nobis; ut demum abdicantes omnia et obli- 
vioni tradentes, ipsum solum in gratis et odiosis nude capiamus, utque 
seteris quibusque neglectis, ipsi uni inhtereamus. 


DRAUGHT OF FISHES, 


499 


some paces along the rough and rocky shore, bidding Peter 
to follow; thus setting forth to him in a figure his future 
life, which should be a following of his divine Master in 
the rude and rugged path of Christian actionJ All this 
was not so much spoken as done; for Peter, Hurning 
about,’ —looking, that is, behind him,—^ seeth the disciple 
whom Jesus loved ’ —words not introduced idly, and as little 
so the allusion to his familiarity at the Paschal supper, 
but to explain the boldness of John in following unbidden;^ 
him he sees ^following,’ and thereupon inquires, ‘Lord, and 
what shall this man do ? ’ He would know what his portion 
shall be, and what the issue of his earthly conversation. 
Shall he, too, follow by the same rugged path ? It is not 
very easy to determine the motive of this question, or the 
spint in which it was asked: it was certainly something 
more than a mere natural curiosity. Augustine takes it 
as the question of one concerned that his friend should be 
left out, and not summoned to the honour of the same 
close following of his Lord with himself; who would fain 
that as in life, so in death they should not be divided (2 
Sam. i. 23).^ Others find a motive less noble in it; that it 
was put more in the temper of Martha, when she asked 
the Lord, ‘ Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister hath 

^ Grotius here says excellently well: Sicut mode res ante gestas signa 
dicendorum sumsit, ita nunc quod dixerat signo conspicuo exprimit. Nam 
Sequere me, sensum habet et ilium communem cui etiam Petrus in 
praesens paruit, et mysticum alterum. Alludit ad id quod dixerat Matt. 
X. 38. 

^ Bengel: Ut autem in coena ilia ita nunc quoque locum quaerebat, 
et se familiariter insinuabat, propemodum magis, quam Petrus libenter 
perferret. 

* /Slsrm. ccliii. 3 : Quomodo ego sequor, et ipse non sequitur ? Jerome’s 
{Adv. Jovin. i. 26) is slightly different: Nolens deserere Johannem, cum 
quo semper fuerat copulatus. In later times many have seen in Peter’s 
words the jealousy of the practical life for the contemplative. The first 
thinks hardly of the other, counts it a shunning of the cross, a shrinking 
from earnest labour in the Lord's cause,—^would fain have it also to be a 
martyr not merely in will, but in deed; see on this matter the very inter¬ 
esting extracts from the writings of the Abbot Joachim, in Neander, 
Kirch, Gesch, vol. v. p. 440. 

22 


500 THE SECOND MIRACULOUS 

left me to serve alone ? ’ (Luke x. 40), ill satisfied that 
Marj should remain quietly sitting at Jesus’ feet, while 
she was engaged in laborious service for HimJ It is cer¬ 
tainly possible that Peter, knowing all which that ^ Follow 
Me/ addressed to himself, implied, may have felt a mo¬ 
ment’s jealousy at the easier lot assigned to John. 

But let it have been this jealousy, or that anxiety con¬ 
cerning the way in which the Lord would lead his fellow 
Apostle (and oftentimes it is harder to commit those whom 
we love to his guiding than ourselves, and to dismiss in 
regard of them all distrustful fears), it is plain that the 
source out of which the question proceeded was not alto¬ 
gether a pure one. There lies something of a check in the 
reply. These ^ times and seasons ’ it is not for him to 
know, nor to intermeddle with things which are the Lord’s 
alone. He claims to be the allotter of the several portions 
of his servants, and gives account of none of his matters : 

^ Partly no doubt their general character, as unfolded in the Gospels, 
but mainly this passage, has caused the two Apostles, St. Peter and St. 
John, to be accepted in the Church as the types, one of Christian action, 
the other of Christian contemplation; one, like the servants, xcorldng for 
its absent Lord; the other, like the virgins, waiting for Him: the office 
of the first, the active labouring for Christ, to cease and pass away, when 
the need of this should have passed j but of the other to remain (luvnv) 
till the coming of the Lord, and not then to cease, but to continue for 
evermore. Thus Augustine in a noble passage, of which this is but a 
fragment (In Ev. Joh. tract, cxxiv.) : Huas itaque vitas sibi divinitus 
praedicatas et commendatas novit Ecclesia, quarum est una in fide, altera 
in specie; una in tempore peregrinationis, altera in setemitate mansionis; 
una in labore, altera in requie j una in via, altera in patria 5 una in opere 
actionis, altera in mercede contemplationis; .... una bona et mala 
discernit, altera quae sola bona sunt, cernit: ergo una bona est, sed 
adhuc misera, altera melior et beata. Ista significata est per Apostolum 
Petrum, ilia per Johannem. Tota hie agitur ista usque in hujus seculi 
finem, et illic invenit finem: differtur ilia complenda post hujus seculi 
finem, sed in futuro seculo non habet finem. Ideo dicitur huic, Sequere 
me: de illo autem. Sic eum volo manere donee veniam, quid ad te ? Tu 

me sequere.Quod apertius ita dici potest, Perfecta me sequatui 

actio, informata mese passionis exemplo; inchoata vero contemplatio 
maneat donee venio, perficienda cum venero. All this reappears in the 
twelfth century in connexion with the Evangelium HIternum (see Neander, 
as in the last note). 



DRAUGHT OF FISHES. 


501 

‘ If 1 ivill that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? 
follow thou Me^ (cf. Jolm ii. 4). At the same time this, 
like so many of onr Lord’s repulses, is not a mere repulse. 
He may refuse to comply with an untimely request, yet 
seldom or never by a blank negation; and often He gives 
even in the very act of seeming to deny; his Hay proving 
indeed a veiled Yea. So it was here. For assuredly the 
error of those brethren who drew from these words the 
conclusion, ‘ that that disciple should not dief had not its 
root ill the mistaking a mere hypothetical ‘ If I willf for a 
distinct prophetical announcement. That ‘If I will’ is 
no h}q)otlietical case. As Christ did not mean, so cer¬ 
tainly the disciples did not take Him to mean, ‘ If I choose 
that the laws of natural decay and death should be sus¬ 
pended in his case, and that thus he should live on till my 
return to judgment, this is nothing to thee.’ Rather, even 
while He checks Peter for asking the question. He does 
declare his pleasure that John should ^ tarry ’ till his 
coming. Hor may we empty this ‘ tarry ’ of all deeper 
significance, which many, willing to make all things easy 
here, but who only succeed in making them easy by 
making them trivial, have done—as though it meant, ‘tarry ’ 
in Galilee, or ^ tarry ’ in Jerusalem, while Peter was labor¬ 
iously preaching the Gospel over all the world. To ‘ tarry ’ 
can be taken in no other sense than that of to remain alive 
(cf. Phil. i. 25 ; I Cor. xv. 6 ; John xii. 34). 

But how could Christ thus announce that John should 
‘ tarry ’ till He came ? Two answers have been given. 
Augustine, whom Grotius, Lampe,^ and many moderns 
follow, understands ^ till I come ’ to signify, ^ till I take him 
away—till I summon him by an easy and natural death to 
Myself'.’ But where then is the antithesis between his lot 
And Peter’s ? However violent and painful the death of 

^ Si nolo eum morte violenta tolli quasi ante diem, sed manere in pla- 
cidS, senectute superstitem usque dum veniara et morte naturali ilium ad 
me recipiam, quid istud ad te ? 


502 


THE SECOND MIRACULOUS 


Peter may Iiave been, yet did not the Lord in this sense 
‘ come ’ to him ? does He not come to every faithful believer 
at the hour of his departure, be his death of 'what kind it 
may ? Eesolve this into common language, and it is in 
fact, ^ If I will that he live till he die, what is that to thee? ’ 
Some of our Lord’s sayings may appear slight, which yet 
prove most deep; none seem deep, and yet on nearer in¬ 
spection prove utterly slight and trivial, as this so inter¬ 
preted would do. We shall best interpret it by the help 
and in the light of Matt. xvi. 28; x. 23. John should 
Harry. ^ He only among the twelve, according to that 
other and earlier announcement of his Lord, should not 
taste of death, till he had seen ^ the Son of man coming in 
his kingdom.’ That shaking, not of the earth only, but 
also of the heaven, that passing away of the old Jewish 
economy with a great noise, to make room for a new 
heaven and a new earth, this he should overlive, and see 
the Son of man, invisibly, yet most truly, coming to 
execute judgment on his foes (Matt. xxiv. 34). He only 
of the Twelve should survive the destruction of Jerusalem, 
that catastrophe, the mightiest, the most significant, the 
most dreadful, and at the same time, as making room for 
the Church of the living God, the most blessed, which the 
world has seen; and ^ tarry ’ far on into the glorious age 
which should succeed. 

Hor was this all. His whole life and ministry should be 
in harmony with that its peaceful end. His should be a 
still work throughout; to deepen the inner life of the 
Church rather than to extend outwardly its borders. The 
rougher paths were not appointed for his treading; he 
should be perfected by another discipline. Martyr in will, 
but not in deed, he should crown a calm and honoured old 
age by a natural and peaceful death. This, which Au¬ 
gustine and others make the primary meaning of the words, 
we may accept as a secondary and subordinate. It was 
not, indeed, that he, or any other saint, should escape hU 


DRAUGHT OF FISHES. 


503 


sliare of tribulation, or that the way for him, or for any, 
should be other than a strait and a narrow one (Eev. i. 9). 
Yet we see daily how the sufferings of different members 
of the kingdom are allotted in very different proportions ; 
with some, they are comparatively few and far between, 
while for others, their whole life seems a constant falling 
from one trial to another.^ 

He who records these words about himself notes, but 
notes only to refute, an expectation which had gotten 
abroad among the brethren, drawn from this saying inac¬ 
curately reported or wrongly understood, that he should 
never die; for, of course, if he had indeed ‘ tarried ’ to 
the end of all, then mortality would in him have been 
swallowed up in life, and he would have passed into 
the heavenly kingdom without tasting death (i Cor.' xv. 
51; I Thess. iv. 17). And is there not something more 
than humility in the anxious earnestness with which he 
repels any such interpretation ? Ho such mournful prero¬ 
gative should be his ; not so long shall he be absent from 
his Lord. There lies no such sentence upon him of weary 
and prolonged exclusion from that presence in which is 
fulness of joy (Phil. i. 23). The Synagogue may have 
its ^wandering Jew,’ who can never die; but this, not 
because there rests on him a peculiar blessing, but a 
peculiar curse. Yet this explicit declaration from the lips 
of the Apostle himself, that Jesus had uttered no such 
word as that he should not die, did not effectually extin¬ 
guish such a belief or superstition in the Church. 
find traces of it surviving long; even his death and burial, 
which men were compelled to acknowledge, were not suf¬ 
ficient to abolish it. For his death, some said, was only 

1 Bernard {InNativ. SS. Innocent, i) : Et "bibit ergo Johannes calicem 
salutaris, et secutus est Dominiim, siciit Petrus, etsi non omni modo sicut 
Petrus. Quod enim sic mansit ut non etiam passione corporea Dominum 
sequeretur, divini fuit consilii; sicut ipse ait, Sic eum volo manere, do¬ 
nee veniam. Ac dicat : Yult quiJem et ipse sequi, sed ego sic eum 
volo manere. 


504 


SECOND DUAUGHT OF FISHES. 


the appearance of death, and he yet breathed in his grave; 
so that even an Angustine vras unable wholly to resist the 
reports which had reached him, that the earth yet heaved, 
and the dust was lightly stirred by the regular pulses of 
his breathd The fable of his still living, Augustine at 
once rejects; but is more patient with this report than one 
might have expected, counting it possible that a permar- 
nent miracle might be wrought at the Apostle’s grave.* 

^ In Ev. Joh. tract, cxxiv.: Cum mortims putaretur, sepultum fuisse 
dormientem, et donee Christus veniat sic manere, suamque xitam scatii- 
rigine pulveris indicare: qui pulvis creditur, ut ab imo ad siiperficiem 
tumuli ascendat, flatu quiescentis impelli. Huic opinioni supervacaneum 
existimo reluctari, Viderint enim qui locum sciunt, utrum boc ibi faciat 
vel patiatur terra, quod dicitur; quia et revera non a levibus bominibus 
id audivimus. 

^ See Tertullian, 50; Hilary, Trm. vi, 39; Ambrose, 

Exp. in Ps. cxviii. Serm. xviii. 12 ; Jerome, Adv. Jovin. i. 26; Abelard, 
Serm. 24,*. Neander, Kirch. Gesch. vol, v. p. 1117. Tbis superstition 
aided much tlie wide-spread faitb of tbe Middle Ages in tbe existence of 
Prester John in further Asia. So late as tbe sixteenth century an en¬ 
thusiast or impostor was burnt at; Toulouse, who gave himself out as 
St. John; and in England some of tbe sects of the Commonwealth were 
looking for bis return to revive and reform the Church.—The erroneous 
reading Sic [for >S'f] eum volo manere, which early found its way into 
the Latin copies, and which the Vulgate, with the obstinate persistence 
of the Romish Church in a once-admitted error, still retains, may have 
helped on, and served to maintain, the mistake concerning the meaning of 
the words of our Lord. 


A APPZETON A CO. POBLISU 

NOTES 


ON mE 


MIRACLES OF OUR LORD. 

BY THE 

REV. RICHARD C. TRENCH, M.A. 

One volume, 8vo, 

“ TTiis book is a reprint of an English work. The author is Professor of Divinity in King'* 
(Jollege, London, and is the author of a standard work, also repi-inted in this country, on the 
‘ Parables of our Lord.’ We have examined the book before us with some little attention; and 
fee! gi-atilied at the results of the examination. We have nothing in the English language, on this 
subject, which can compare in elaborateness and critical value with the work of Mr. Trench. The 
style of treatment adopted by Mr. Trench is plain and familiar, following the course of the Script¬ 
ure narrative, and is eminently apologetic. Difficulties are met and rieared away with a readi¬ 
ness that shows familiarity, not only with the records themselves, but with the almost Infinite 
theological controversies to which they have given rise. The author relies much on the authority 
of the Fathers. He is evidently femiliar with their, in some respects, incomparable productions, 
particularly with the writings of that clear thinker and master in theology, Augustine, Bishop of 
Hippo. These ancient writings he uses, often by way of illustration, very aptly. Mr. Trench is 
familiar, too, with the productions of the German theologians, and makes good use of them in his 
Notes, now by confuting them, now by adducing their testimony in support of his own views. 
Without this knowledge of what the Germans have said, no man, of the present day, need expect, 
we may safely say, to contribute any thing really scholarUke, valuable, or permanent to theolo^cai 
literature. Mr. Trench knows well the truth of this assertion. Indeed, the most valuable sugges¬ 
tions in his present work bear the mark of their German origin. Not that the wiiter has bor¬ 
rowed without due credit from others ; but he has become imbued, by his plan of study, with the 
critical spirit of his masters. 

“ The Miracles treated of are thirty-three in number. There is prefixed to the main body of 
the work, a Preliminary Essay on Miracles, in which the author discourses in an interesting and 
masterly manner on the six following points: a.) their Names; &.) their Nature; c.) their Author¬ 
ity ; d.') the Evangelical compared with other Cycles; e.) Assaults on them; /.) their Apologetic 
Worth. The book is neatly bound in muslin.” 

“ This is a work of great learning, evincing also, on the part of the author, much thought and 
reflection. He draws very largely from the Fathers of the Church, both for his opinions and eluci¬ 
dation!}, and to a Churchman, especially, it is possessed of much interest and many attractions. 
The style is clear and nervous, and the writer evidently fond of literary and theological research, 
whose min d seems to have been fully and intensely occupied with the subject. He states his 
opinions boldly, and is not ashamed to acknowledge the different sources whence they are derived. 
He has, in the amount of intelligence he has condensed and communicated in this volume, been 
of great assistance to the lovers of sacred lore, and the subject which he has chosen for discussion 
is of itself of so imposing a character, as to command in his readers their fixed interest and atten¬ 
tion. Some have considered this work as unequalled on this subject.” 

“ The book contains a preliminary essay on the names of miracles; the miracles and Nature; 
the authority of the miracle; the evangelical compared vrith other cycles of miracles; the assaults 
on the miracles, and the apologetic worth of the miracles. 

“The miracles of our Saviour are then treated of in their order, commencing with the Water 
made Wine at Cana, and concluding with the second Miraculous Draught of Fishes; thirty-three 

in number. x 

“ That this part of the Sacred History is the legitunate theme of a work, such as this claims to 
be, is apparent. Christ’s Miracles form a distinct feature of the history of His mission upon earth. 
It is that feature of His public life which attracts the attention of the world, and challenges the 
closest scrutiny. If this scrutiny succeeds in proving their genuineness, the claims of Jesus as 
the Saviour of the world are forever established ; since, when once proved genuine, they are mir¬ 
acles to us, precisely as much as to those who with their own eyes looked upon them. 

“ In the treatment of these subjects, the author makes a critical examination of the text, illus¬ 
trated with copious notes, so as to place before the reader a full exposition of all the circumstances 
attending the miracle. The practical as well as general design of such a miracle is also fully 
pointed out, so that the reader is put in possession of the scope and bearing of this part of the 

work of our Saviour considered by itself. i. i, 4. xs x,* u 

“ To the full understanding of the New Testament such a treatise as this would seem neces¬ 
sary and the book will undoubtedly be found a welcome aid to the Biblical student, the Sabbath- 
School teacher, and the general reader.” 


Studies in the Creative Week. 


By Rev. GEORGE D. BOARDMAN, D. D. 


1 VOL., 12mo. ........ Cloth, $1.25. 


The Lectures, fourteen in number, embrace the following topics: 1 . Intro¬ 
duction; 2. Genesis of the Universe; 3. Of Order; 4 . Of Light; 6 . Of the 
Sky; 6 . Of the Lands; V. Of Plants; 8 . Of the Luminaries; 9 . Of Animals; 
10 . Of Man; 11 . Of Eden; 12 . Of Women; 13. Of the Sabbath; 14. Palin¬ 
genesis. 

“ We see in the Lectures more than the sensation of the hour. They will have a marked 
effect in denning the position of the believer of to-day, in certifying both to disciple and 
to skeptic just what is to be held against all attack; and the statement of the case will be 
in many cases the strongest argument. They will tend to broaden the minds of believers, 
and to hit them above the letter to the plane of the spirit. They will show that truth and 
religion are capable of being defended without violence, without denunciation, without 
misrepresentation, without the impugning of motives .”—National Baptist. 

‘‘Reflation and Science can not really conflict, because ‘truth can not be contrary to 
truth; but so pers^tent have been the attacks of scientists on time-honored orthodoxy, 
that the believer in Revelation has long demanded an exhaustive work on the first chapter 
lu response to this widespread feeling, the Rev. George Dana Boardman, 
D. D., the learned pastor of the First Baptist Church, Philadelphia, was requested to deliver 
a course of lectures covering this debatable ground.” 


-- 

HISTORY OF OPINIONS 


ON THE 

Scriptural Doctrine of Retribution. 

> 


By EDWARD BEECHER, D. D., 

Author qf “ The Conflict of Ages." 


1 VOL., 12mo. 


Cloth, $1.25. 


The moraentotte question of future retribution is here historically discussed with an 
earnestness and deliberation due to its transcendrnt importance. The main interest of 
the inquiry naturally centers in the doom of the wicked. Will it be annihilation f ultimate 
restoration to holiness and happiness? endless punishment? oris it out of our power to 
decide which of these views is tlie tmth ? The discussion is intensified by being narrowed 
to the meaning of a single word, aionios. The opinions of those to whom Christ spoke, 
and how they understood him, are Vital questions in the argument; and, to solve them, the 
opinions and modes of speech of preceding ages must be attentively weighed, for each 
age is known to have molded the opinions and use of words of its successor. Hence, Dr. 
Beecher has found himself compelled to ‘ trace the development of thought and language 
from the outset to the days of Christ, then to inquire into the import of his words, in the 
light of all preceding ages; and, lastly, to trace the development of opinion downward 
through the Christian ages.” 


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Being Part IV. of “ The Principles of Sociology.” (The first portion of 
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EPIPHANIES 

OF THE 

RISEN LORD. 

By GEORGE DANA BOARDMAN, D. D., 

Author of “The Creative Week,” and “Studies in the Model Prayer.” 


1 voL, 12mo. Cloth. . Price, $1.25. 


“ In arranging the ‘ Epiphanies of the Risen Lord,’ the author is aware that 
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STUDIES 


I 

IN THE 

MODEL PRAYER. 


By. GEORGE D. BOARDMAN, D. D., 

t 

Author of “ The Creatiye Week.” 


1 voL, 12mo. Cloth. .... Price, $1.25. 


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—N'. Y. Examiner and Chronicle. 

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D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street, New York. 





TEIT-WOEK II PA-LESTIIE 


9 

9 


A Eecorl of Dlscoyery am AlTentiire. 

By CLAUDE REIGNIER CONDER, R. E., 

Ofllcer in Command of the Survey Expedition, 

Published for the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, 

With 33 Illustrations by J. W. WHYMPER. 

2 vols., 8vo...Cloth, $6.00. 


COKTTEISrTS- 


The Road to Jerusalem. 

Shechem and the Samaritans, 

The Survey of Samaria. 

The Great Plain op Esdr^elon. 
The Nazareth Hills. 

Carmel and Acre. 

Sharon. 

Damascus, Baalbek, and Hermon. 
Samson’s Country. 

Bethlehem and Mar Suba. 
Jerusalem. 

The Temple and Calvary. 


Jericho, 

The Jordan Valley. 

Hebron and Beersheba. 

The Land of Benjamin. 

The Desert op Judah. 

The Shephdah and Philistria. 
Galilee. 

The Origin of the Fellahin. 

Life and Habits of the Fellahin. 
The Bedawin. 

Jews, Russians, and Germans. 

The Fertility op Palestine. 


Tills book is intended to give as accurate a general description as possible 
of Palestine, which, through the labors of the Committee of the Exploration 
Fund, is brought home to us in such a way that the student may travel, in his 
study, over its weary roads and rugged hills without an ache, and may ford its 
dangerous streams and pass through its malarious plains without discomfort. 


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